Solitary Man
by J.A. Carlton
Summary: Three days have passed since the boys managed to destroy the demon Eddy Jay, and all is returning to normal until Sam takes a secretive trip and Dean fears himself abandoned...
1. Chapter 1

Solitary Man – sn fic – Chpt 1.

By sifi

Disclaimer: Course I don't own 'em… that would be illegal… technically speaking, not to mention immoral...

Love: You do the math…

--

Sam looked across the room and watched his brother wrap himself around the woman sleeping contentedly in his arms and pressed "End" on the phone as he strove to work the color back up from the pit of his belly and into his face.

His fingers fumbled with the covers as he tossed them off, took one step that brought him halfway to the table, grasped the laptop, and brought his leg back into bed with the rest of him.

He smiled shaking his head as he looked at them again. Dean certainly needed the rest after what they finished only three days ago, and he certainly deserved it, but he found himself surprised that Laura wasn't more easily awoken.

_This can't be… hasn't he been through enough! How? How…is it possible?…_ he wondered feeling a squeeze in his heart as the information Shep had just relayed to him slapped a piton into one of the convolutions of his brain and stuck there, almost like one of those damned chunks of crystal had done in his back. _I wonder if she'll help me… I'm sure she will if I tell them both I need a little R&R after that last gig and want to head to New York to see Sarah… yeah… but damn, Dean's good…he might know I'm lying, he might be too preoccupied to know it though if she decides to hang around a little longer, which she might do if I'm not around… Don't forget Sammy boy… her allegiance is to him, her heart belongs to him, if he thinks you're lying she will help him and you don't want to try and evade them both… Well, it wouldn't be a complete lie, I could drop in on Sarah, say hello, passing through town, go to dinner…kiss the girl…oh sweet kisses, but no, not this time. Seeing Sarah will have to wait for another time. Gotta get my butt to Missouri and see it for myself…Yet you still want to use her as an alibi for your lie… I don't have to involve her…Dean'll kill me if I screw this up and he finds out… heh, he might have to resurrect me to do it though…_ he heard the back of his mind, called the conscience, funny, it had Dean's voice most of the time, it yelled at him and he could've sworn he almost felt it smack him. _Man you are really a piece of work!_ He shook his head and stuck a wad of duct tape over the voice.

--

"Call if you need anything, we'll meet you there in a week?" Dean confirmed shaking his brothers' hand.

"We?" Sam asked and looked smiling at Laura.

"He means he…" she grinned and reached up, hugging Sam hard and kissing his cheek, "Thanks for calling…" she whispered into his ear.

"Thanks for coming," he said softly back and let her go. He watched her step back into the protective half circle of his brothers' arm and realized she fit there.

"See you in a week," he waved just before he headed down the jetway.

_That was a helluva lot easier than I thought it would be. I hope to God Shep e-mailed me those files, I'm gonna need to know what I have to buy to get this taken care of. And if I fail… he's in the best hands possible… what more could I ask for? _

--

"What?" Laura asked curiously as they walked through the airport back to the parking lot.

"It's funny, I was thinking about sending him to New York for a few days… a few days before you got here… I'm glad he's going though, he deserves the break," he smiled gently while opening the car door for her.

"Yeah maybe get his mind off hunting for a while… considering what you were telling me about that last gig and what that bastard did to the both of you… he needs to heal too," she nodded sliding partially into her own thoughts as he pulled out onto the main road and angled Metallicar back toward the motel.

"You don't want to come with me? We could caravan…" he asked making sure he didn't have to look into her eyes if she was going to answer in a way he didn't want to hear.

She shrugged, "I'll ride with you as long as I can… I can go get the car anytime, I just never know where or when I'm going to wind up getting 'assigned' y'know?"

Dean chuckled and looked at her, he'd momentarily forgotten he was talking to another graduated hunter, this one bound to an Ancient Pagan deity to do his bidding until he released her from servitude. His eyes fell on the golden torque that circled her neck and he nodded, "Yeah, that whole 'where to next' yeah I get it… so breakfast or the road till lunch?"

"Breakfast… then desert," she smiled wryly.

"Done deal," he grinned pushing his baby's accelerator down just a little more.

--

"Sir I don't understand, you just purchased this ticket," the agent questioned looking hard at the slip of paper in her hand and wondering if she'd made a mistake.

Sam nodded, "I know… I just got a call though and have to rearrange things," he smiled wanly and judging by the sympathetic look he got from her she read his expression as 'something tragic' which in effect it was.

"Certainly sir," she smiled softly, "the next flight to St. Louis International Airport leaves in forty-five minutes… and there are still seats open…"

"Great! Thanks," he smiled tightly and nodded while robotically going through the rest of the motions to ensure he was on that plane. He even managed to arrange a rental car on the other end before they called his seat grouping.

--

The wait for the flight seemed interminably longer than the flight itself and Sam could barely focus on any one thing, his mind kept running in circles, _If Dean finds out about this he's gonna kill me… how did it happen? Maybe… no, I wonder how long it'll take till he finds out I took the battery out of his cell? God he's soooo gonna kill me…he has to understand… I know he's still hurting but he's healing… it's time I stepped up to the plate and watched his back… besides, on a positive note, it's probably nothing! Then I really can catch a flight to New York and drop in on Sarah! Dean and maybe Laura will meet us there and we'll go on a couple double dates, get our own rooms with our girls… huh, our girls?_ _mmmm… yeah, unfortunately I know this Something…_ he sighed and smiled wistfully while he waited for the arrival of his rental car.

--

"Nice to see you again Mr. Rodgers," the clerk smiled and Sam suddenly had the urge to break out a beige cardigan. He nodded smiling.

"Single or double?" she asked.

"Single," he winced, the sound of the word so wrong.

He stepped into the room stunned by the sight of a single bed. A ghost-like image of Dean heading to the bathroom first, like he always did when they got into a new place, strolled through his visual path, _Huh, kinda like marking his territory…_Sam thought to himself and smiled then opened the large canister of salt he'd just bought. He tossed the bag onto the bed and fortified the room _I wonder if I'll ever be able to stay anywhere without salting the doors and windows_, he couldn't remember ever being in a place where he didn't salt something. Even the window and door sashes at Stanford had borne regular saltings, unbeknownst to Jess of course.

Once the room was fortified he unrolled his suit and changed clothes then sat down at the table with the computer looking for directions to the morgue.

--

Laura slid off of Dean and pressed her mouth to his whimpering, "Talk about timing… son of a bitch!" she cursed.

"Short…cake…hmmm desert jokes…" he sighed watching her dress in the afternoon light, "I wish you could stay a little longer," he smiled.

"So do I Dean believe me," she grinned.

"Any idea where you're off to?" he asked.

"Nah, I won't know which direction to go until I hit the road…"

"What's it feel like?" he asked.

She smiled, closed her eyes and turned her beaming face upward, "It's like following the sun with your face… without the sunburn,"

_I could see you with a little sunburn on your nose, betcha you'd look really cute._ He thought and cocked half a smile at her.

"Whatever you're thinking… you just keep on thinking it… I want to take a mental picture of that expression…" she grinned sitting on the bed and drawing her gymshoes on.

Standing in the doorway barefoot in his jeans he raised his hand as she approached the main road. He saw her shadow wave as she hesitated a moment then made an easy left turn and disappeared around a bend.

_Well okay that sucks out loud…it's gonna be a long drive to New York._ He checked his watch and shrugged. _Sam should be touching down in another couple hours, wonder if he'll remember to call tonight or if it'll hit him in the morning. _He smiled a little sadly and leaped into his bed with the remote in hand.

About eleven o'clock, after gorging himself on one of the largest grilled chicken spinach salads he'd ever eaten, and downing half a six pack he reached over and out of habit grabbed his cell, flipping it open and doing a quick double take when the menu didn't come up. _Huh… I thought I charged it yesterday,_ he thought and plugged it in. His brows furrowed when the telltale beep never came and the light didn't flash. _Huh…_he heard his mind grunt and felt something start to happen deep inside, something that was salad and beer related.

He flipped the phone over, opened the battery compartment and breathed out hard knowing there had to be some kind of an explanation. _Maybe the plate fell off and it fell out and Sammy or Laura put it back on without noticing the battery was gone, it's probably on the floor by the nightstand…_

An hour later, after thoroughly tearing the room apart and searching his beloved Metallicar just as thoroughly, sliding his hands between her seats, checking under the floor mats, the glove box, the ash tray for the tiny device he grunted and paced the room, horribly sober and trying to quell that awakening sensation of 'something not quite right'. _Okay… I'll buy a new one in the morning it's not like they don't sell 'em pretty much everywere. _

In the meantime he picked up the room phone and dialed Sarah the old fashioned way, needing to hear his brothers' voice in a way that almost physically hurt him. _If you're in the middle of something guys I'm sorry, really, but… something isn't right here, _he finally caved to the feeling.

--

"…thanks… I will… you too," he acknowledged distractedly, his bag already half packed as he hung up and hitched a breath.

_He abandoned you… he left your sorry ass Dean… probably couldn't take the whining anymore…No! Sam wouldn't do that, not after everything we've been through, not after this past year… he came back in Burkittsville, he said it was him and me… together. He wouldn't just pick up and leave… maybe the plane got re-routed for some reason…_he clutched at the ray of hope and sat with the phone once more.

_Another half hour wasted…_he cursed himself. The flight had landed safely almost three hours ago and no one by the name Sam Freeman was listed for that particular flight.

_What the hell! What's going on!_ he demanded inside, shouting above that tiny voice in the back of his brain that kept laughing and clutching its belly, insisting that Sam had run away, that he'd abandoned him. _I don't believe that! _he shouted back and kicked that little bastard across his brain, _If he wanted out all he had to do was say the word, there's something more going on and so help me God I'm gonna find out what it is, and Sammy, little bro, so help me man if you don't have a freakin' SHINEY explanation I'm gonna bitch smack you so hard your grandkids are gonna feel it!_ he promised grabbing his belongings and tossing them into the car. The least he could do was erase a few miles between Oklahoma and New York while he waited for a store to open so he could buy a new battery.

--

tbc?

What cha think?

P's Q's

sifi


	2. Chapter 2

Solitary Man chpt 2

Driving through the wee hours with Metal to fuel the fire of his fear Dean forced himself with only the discipline that had been drilled into him starting at the age of four acting as his self-censor, to keep the Impala a steady ten miles an hour over the speed limit while on I80E. By the time any place was open to buy a battery for his cell, he'd made it all the way to Salt Lake City Utah and was emotionally drained. Not even his favored Metallica could drown out the ring of questions that flapped maddeningly in his head.

_What I need is information… let's start with who we've been talking to. Damnit, if I had his laptop I might be able to get an idea of what he's up to! Okay, okay plan of action… first call… _

He'd gotten lucky with the battery when he stopped at a local vendor, he was going to be able to make three calls without having to re-charge it. He dialed the first number and got voice mail, somehow he'd known he would.

"Sam! Sam where the hell are you? You call me as soon as you get this message! I talked to Sarah last night and she hasn't seen or heard from you so…call me man, don't make me hunt you down!...Call me damnit!" he ended the call and moved onto the next, where he also got voice mail.

_OOoh shocker!_ he thought angrily, "Dad it's me… listen… it's Sam… I'm sure he's okay, but the thing is I put him on a plane to go see a friend, figured he needed the R&R after the last gig… if you've kept in touch with Bobby and Shep you know we were dealing with… bad… by the way, the Redbird bullets work, just fyi… well, Sam never made it to his friend's… and there was no record of him being on the plane even though we watched him walk down the jetway… call me or keep your eyes peeled, he could be anywhere… I hit a wall at the airport we dropped him at, I'm heading East on 80… I'll find him…just, thought you should know…" Dean sighed and felt a certainty in his heart, it was that same perfectly balanced, glistening silver edge his younger brother had felt as they started the Guinardi case. He knew he would find Sam. There was no doubt, it was as certain as the sun rising. What he wasn't so certain about was whether or not he'd kill him if he found him alive or resurrect, then kill him, if he found him dead. _Weird thing is, I can almost feel that he's okay…yeah I got nervous belly going on here but… I believe he's alright, for the moment anyway. I just wish I knew what was going on, that's what's killing me… He took the cell battery, he had to have…that points to premeditation, which points to contrivance, which points to duplicity which points to lying to me! _

He looked at the battery level and fostered a glimmer of hope that he could squeeze two more calls out of the charge. He dialed.

"Bobby!" he breathed a sigh of relief when their friend answered on the second ring, "It's Dean… am I glad to hear your voice… listen… something's up with Sam… he…well… he… ditched me… I guess you could say…" he ran down the situation quickly while Bobby listened intently, saying little, "…Well… no, I think he's alright, I mean weird as it sounds I feel like he's alright but… you don't understand… no… Salt Lake City… I'm heading toward New York, where he was supposed to be… How do I know he took off? He… well for starters someone took my cell phone battery… College boy might think of that don't cha think?" he sniped. Bobby was telling him to relax and not be paranoid, that there was bound to be a logical explanation for what would probably turn out to be little more than some Monty Python-esque comedy of errors. He was also insinuating that the intensity of their last gig might be serving to feed his fears, and though Dean admitted that might be true, there was something in his guts telling him to forge ahead. _And if there's one thing I do well it's follow my instincts… uhh except when they almost get us killed by the freakishly intelligent ghost of a sadist who knew the root of more Latin than Geek Boy… _"Look I'm running out of juice here, I gotta charge this thing… just keep your ears and eyes open, call your contacts and tell 'em to do the same and get back to me it if anyone sees him, that's all I'm asking okay?"

He could almost hear Bobby nod on the other line as he said, "That I can do… take care boy," and cut his end of the line before Dean could.

_Okay… _he looked at the power slide, _Damnit!_ he knew he'd never get another call out so plugged the charger into the lighter until he could make the next motel. He wouldn't get a chance to kick Sam's ass if he wound up dead on the road from driving while half asleep.

--

Sam shook hands with Chief Medical Examiner Ryan Davies and smiled nodded, actively stretching his senses, trying to get a read on the man the way Dean would. He knew he wasn't as good at reading people as his big brother, but as Dean kept assuring him, "Dude, you're only gonna get to Carnegie Hall if you practice you ass off…" Sam knew it was Dean's own particular bastardization of an old joke but thinking of it still made him smile. _I wish you were here with me now. I hate doing this alone… and so help me I already have a greater understanding of why you came and got me that night. You might've been working your own gig, but you knew you had dad to go back to, then you didn't…I hope… no, that's not necessary. I know you'll forgive me when all is said and done… it's your nature. _

"Well Detective, like I told you over the phone, our local boys want to keep some of these details a little close to the vest, for obvious reason…" Dr. Davies reiterated.

Sam nodded and followed him down the corridor unbelievably glad that this was a small enough burg for their morgue to contain the smell. He remembered walking into Cook County Medical Examiner's office once and how the scent of rotting meat underlay everything. The techs there had told him, you bring your clothes, you bag 'em and change into your scrubs when you get there. You only take your scrubs home to wash 'em and you never wash 'em with your street clothes.

"Believe me Dr. Davies, I understand completely and considering I have no jurisdiction here at all I really appreciate, the delicacy of your position. I also appreciate your willingness to help with this matter… our own team wants to keep it quiet as well," Sam said softly, "Listen, let me give you what I'm guessing is there and if you think I'm on the right track you can help me out if you feel comfortable with it. If you don't, there's no harm, no foul on your part okay?" he bargained.

Dr. Davies stopped and looked at him incredulous, "You sure aren't like any Detective I've ever come across… You got a personal connection to the case you're working?" he asked without accusation or pretense.

Sam smiled and bowed his head, "You might say that…" he nodded.

Dr. Davies, with his country weathered and nearly leathered face met his eyes and seemed to dive in. They stood there silent for a long moment before the fifty-something man ushered him through another door.

Sam found himself in a tiny but chillingly cool office. A chair was crammed solid between the desk and a couch along the back wall. There was a small area near the back of the room where the faint odor of a cigarette remained and on the desk in the corner furthest from the door was a two cup coffee pot on is warmer.

Dr. Davies motioned him to take a seat and he did as the Dr., without assent or preamble poured them each a cup of coffee. Apparently the man either had a Dean-like appreciation for coffee or had considered a small Q & A session with Detective Samuel Rodgers a possibility. Sam smiled and sipped the steaming brew.

"Thank you."

Dr. Davies nodded, "So…let's break the ice a little bit Detective… how'd you get hurt?" he asked and watched as Sam barely contained his sputter.

"Sorry… actually I was working a case…" he said automatically and heard Dean's voice in the back of his head, _Hey… sometimes the truth works._

"Ribs?" Dr. Davies asked.

"Yeah," Sam nodded, "Two broken, blood and lung chunks… very not fun…"

"I'd imagine not," Dr. Davies nodded, "You know there's a little track on the inside of the rib and a little hole… pay attention next time you eat a slab, there's a huge nerve and vein that runs along that little channel, it's called a fossa by the way, that goes into the rib itself… that's why it hurts so much when they break… and depending on the severity of the break… well let's just say you don't want that stuff severed," he smiled easily yet there was an underlying sadness there.

Sam nodded and set his coffee cup down, "Dr. Davies, the victim, Carol Guinardi was discovered with something burned into her chest and/or abdomen, post mortem. Now I don't know for certain, but I can tell you that it wouldn't surprise me if there was a sequence of numbers and perhaps even some letters involved," he handed the coroner exactly what he wanted before sitting back with his cup in hand and sipping the coffee once more.

So long as he didn't think about what he was doing, it would later strike Sam Winchester that he had been quite comfortable talking to the coroner the way he had. Investigator to Expert

Dr. Davies pulled a file from a number of them propped up against the wall and opened it to face Sam.

Sam set his cup down hoping his trembling hands hadn't betrayed him too much, but the first photo he saw was the woman he and Dean had met in the hospital, the one with the thousand mile gaze and the "I should've died decades ago," demeanor. The photos were stark, clinical and sparing nothing to modesty or humility. Her flesh was tinged blue-ish purple and there was no mistaking the cause of death. He could see the jagged tear around the neck and the white of the cervical vertebrae beneath it all. He straightened his tie hoping his own still-fading bruises had gone without notice.

"These were taken the day she was brought in," Dr. Davies said, then thumb nailed a few photos until he found the one he wanted.

This one was an almost identical shot, same angle except this time Carol Guinardi's corpse already had the "Y" incision and it had been sewn back up, but there was more.

The crotch of the "Y" met at the pinnacle of the sternum, at a small bone called the xyphoid process where the central line continued on to bisect the abdomen.

Sam winced. The top of that midline incision, or Carol Guinardi's Right side bore three numbers in the white and red raised skin of a liquid nitrogen blister, and on the opposite side were two letters. Sam swallowed hard and breathed deep before doing his best to return to the moment and meet eyes with the coroner.

"I uh…" he cleared his throat, "If the burns happened post mortem how is it that there's blood in the blisters?" he asked.

"I don't know," Dr. Davies answered softly. "There shouldn't be,"

They stared at each other for a long moment before Dr. Davies nodded and rose, "You want to see it with your own eyes don't you?"

Reluctantly, Sam nodded, "I need to."

"Do you know what any of it means?" Dr. Davies asked leading him into the refrigerator where they kept the local deceased until they were claimed or autopsied and released.

"I don't know," Sam shook his head as the coroner led him to the cart that held Carol Guinardi's body on it and folded back the sheet over her. The police had confiscated the jonnie she'd been wearing at the time of her murder in hopes of obtaining genetic information from it but they'd come up short even in that arena, so the morgue had supplied her the scant dignity of a plain white sheet.

His eyes fixed on her abdomen and he walked around the cart until the numbers were right side up as well as the letters.

_Shep was right, 987 and DW carved into her abdomen…what the hell does it mean? 987 pictures… I know that one… I know the cops pulled 987 pictures off the walls at Aaron Beyers house after then found him having fermented for a few weeks… and I know Dean was there… I know he killed that son of a bitch… is this some kind of cry for vengeance from beyond the grave cause you got squat you S.O.B. what Dean did to you… he did the world a favor… 987 pictures of 61 different kids… so where's the 12 fit in? is it one, comma two or is it a twelve? And why Dean? Carol was Eddy Jay's victim, not Aaron Beyers'… where's the tie? Is there a tie? I mean beside the whole hey I'm gonna resurrect the spirit of another child molester so I can build my own little posse… kind of tie… I don't get it… We salted and burned both of them… I saw them die, so did Dean… how is this happening?_ he wondered and turned to face Dr. Davies.

"Thank you Doctor, I appreciate your time," he nodded tersely and shook the older mans' hand before turning on his heel and striding from the refrigerator and finding his way back out in the warm Missouri sunshine that suddenly felt no more warm than the far away pale yellow of mid-winters' sun.

Sam sat in his rental, cell phone in hand with Dean's name and number on the screen blinking '1 message' _Just one so far… that's good… I just hope Bobby and Shep can keep this under their hats till I figure out what's going on… what's doing this… and why._

He wanted to press send after highlighting Dean's number, by God how he wanted to hear his brothers' voice, wanted to feel his psyche right next to his, striving without conscious effort to keep in tune with him. Dean had a gift when it came to that, Sam knew and wished sometimes for the same gift. Unfortunately he'd been blessed in ways few, including himself really understood.

_I need to hear his voice, _Sam thought and played Dean's voice mail message as the air conditioning sucked the humidity out of the vehicle and he rested his head on the steering wheel with the phone pressed to his ear. He pressed "repeat" more times than he cared to count and listened to that voice that always brought him peace, no matter how angry it was.

--

Should I keep going?


	3. Chapter 3

Solitary Man chpt 3

by sifi

--

With calls having been made to all the steady contacts they had left, Dean sat in the library in Salt Lake City staring blankly at the computer screen, his mind many miles away from the rest of him. Until he heard something from someone he had two choices as he saw them, he could either continue to New York pell mell or he could work smart and see if he could find any clues about anything that might have sparked enough curiosity to make his little brother feel like he had to lie to him.

He ran searches on as many of Sam's friends from Stanford as he could remember and when he found something, a total of four occasions, that might have drawn Sam away, he made phone calls only to find out that Sam hadn't been contacted, nor made any contact of his own, and he most certainly hadn't been seen. Part of him knew that any of those four folks could've been lying but very few people were practiced enough to pull the wool over Dean's eyes. He had a pretty fair ear when it came to sensing untruths, though he did it unconsciously. He even went so far as to run a search on Jessica's surviving family to see if something had happened with any of them, maybe something Big Bad related, but they seemed to be moving on with their lives too. _Well good for them, but it doesn't help me much…_ his eyes caught something as he was scrolling through the page, _What's this…Sedalia Missouri…scribing…undisclosed identity…_ he clicked on the news item.

Local police are baffled once more by yet another unusual

happenstance, this time at the morgue. Four days after the

brutal murder of a local woman while in the care of an area

medical facility it seems that not even death can provide release.

Police are refusing to speculate on who might have been

responsible for the desecration of the victim's corpse, or to say

exactly what was found to have been inscribed on the body.

Local authorities however are urging anyone with information

in this matter to please come forward.

He looked at the date of the story and realized it had been a new news item two days ago. Dean tried a few more searches to see if he could get into systems that might provide information on what exactly had been inscribed on the body of a dead woman, but after wading his way through a never ending series of mazes he sat back scrubbing his face in frustration, the abrasive gauze still protecting them actually felt pretty good against his face.

_Is this what you're chasing Sam? Did you find this story and figure to check it out yourself? But why? Do you really think I'm that weak? Come on Sammy, call me back, talk to me…you know we're better as a team…_ and beneath these surface speculations a key seemed to turn somewhere within, tightening his nerves just a bit as a concept began to form and he allowed himself a question, _What if we didn't kill it after all? _he grasped his jacket off the back of the chair and strode from the library knowing in his depths that if he followed this hunch, somewhere along the way he'd find Sam.

--

His patience was stretched thin and his stomach was practically vibrating when he walked into the office at the Sedalia Motor Inn sixteen hours later, and laid his Dean Taylor credit card down on the counter. He hadn't eaten since breakfast and his brain was just starting to slow down.

"Mr. Taylor… good to see you again so soon," the mid twenties shapely brunette at the counter said cheerfully, "You just missed your friend…"

Dean had to check the distracted nod he was about to give her, he didn't feel like flirting right now but at the mention of Sam his attention snapped like a rubber band to her, "Really? He checked out already?"

She nodded smiling and batting her brown eyes at him, "Mmm hmmm," she licked her bottom lip and Dean actually felt his inner self roll its eyes, "Yesterday afternoon," she said reaching for a room key for him, "I take it you want a single too?"

Dean wedged the left side of his mouth up into his most charming half smile, "Single… heh, yeah… uh, he didn't say where he was going did he?"

The clerk's brows furrowed and she chewed her bottom lip for a second before shaking her head, "Mmm mmm, sorry…"

"Do you remember what he was driving?" he asked.

--

Dean sat at the table in his room and could almost see an echo of his brothers' presence. He shook his head knowing it was ridiculous to think it, but staying in the same room Sam had vacated the previous day made him feel closer to him, made him think that maybe if he worked hard enough at it that he could get into his younger siblings' head and figure out where he was headed to next, or see if perhaps he'd even left a clue behind that housekeeping wouldn't think to clean up. Unfortunately it wasn't to be.

Giving his eyes a rest from the articles he'd printed at the library he started making another round of calls. His frustration built steadily as he left another message for Sam, another for his father, one each for Bobby, Shep and Joshua and finally dialed the last number. This one he actually expected to have to leave a message at.

"Hey handsome… you miss me already?" Laura was grinning on her end, he could hear it in her voice.

"More than you know… I'm starting to feel like a red-headed stepchild here…" he sighed.

"What's goin' on?" she asked curiously.

"You sure you have time?" he asked knowing she'd been called away from him for a case of her own.

"Yeah, I'm just doing some research… go ahead," she urged.

Half an hour later he sat back on his bed, water bottle on the nightstand and remote in one hand while the other held his cell to his ear.

"…so now I'm in the room he was in day before yesterday with no clue which way to go," he finished.

"Hmmm sounds like you've got a plan though… go check out the corpse, see what you can find out… once you get those greens of yours uncrossed go back to the stuff you printed up and see what you come up with… You'll find Sam and figure this out… I have faith in you," she said matter-of-factly.

Dean shook his head, "I don't know why… all I've done since this whole Guinardi thing started was screw it all up… it's like everything I'm doing is coming out ass backwards y'know?"

He heard her sigh on the other end, "Sweetie we all have rough moments, no one said what we do is easy y'know? Okay… so this is a little 'road rash-y' for you but think about this much, Sam is a grown man. He's smart, he's capable, and he's your brother. Okay the whole everything-loves-to-choke-him thing notwithstanding, but… if he thought there was something that needed to be investigated without involving you, you can bet your sweet ass he's just trying to do for you what you've always done for him."

"I'm the one who's supposed to protect him…we're supposed to be a team, you don't just blow off your team y'know?" he interjected.

"I know," she paused a long moment and he could almost feel her heart touch his, trying to soothe him as was her way, "Maybe it's just as simple as wanting to give you some rest and recreation y'know? Maybe he caught sight of the story and figured he'd check it out, make sure it wasn't anything important then really go to New York and see Sarah after all… I don't know… but… what I DO know is that he'd never intentionally hurt you. His awareness has gone through a lot of changes over the last year and he's starting to get the concept of connection… repercussions that echo through time in both directions…"

"Hey Laura…. back to Earth please… you're going a little too esoteric on me here," he smiled. He actually enjoyed it when she went off on quantum tacks, it kinda gave her eyes a dreamy look, like she was looking through ages, and he had to admit, even though he didn't usually quite get what she was saying, listening to her say it, hearing the passion it inspired in her was… _yeah, it's kinda hot_.

"Oh yeah… sorry…" she muttered and he could almost hear her blush.

"Don't be," he smiled getting up pacing the room in a lazy circle.

On the other end of the phone something shattered and thundering 'whumps' reverberated through to him as he heard her voice, "Son of a bitch!"

"Laura?" he barked and felt butterflies take flight. He heard a metallic 'snick' followed by the unmistakable sound of a series of blows being traded behind a melee of destruction.

"I gotta call you back…" she breathed hard just before the line went dead.

Dean ran his fingers through his hair and frowned, _I never even asked her where she was,_ he realized and breathed deep. _She'll be okay… it sounded big, whatever it was… and angry, don't forget angry…she'll be okay… I hope._

--

Chicago, Illinois

Trish Harris pushed the heavy steel door to her Lincoln Park loft open just enough to admit her then slid it closed and pulled down on the steel latch that was part of the reason she loved the place so much. She was safer here than she could've been anywhere else that she could think of.

She slung her messenger bag off her shoulder and dropped it atop a pile of shoes she kept on a little mat by the door, then added the pair she was wearing to the jumble.

"Aaah free the feet…" she sighed shrugging out of her windbreaker and hung it on the tree.

Walking toward the kitchen her toes worked hard to grab the highly polished and lacquered hard wood floor even through her socks. The kitchen floor was no better but she kicked off the small threshold that separated the room from the hallway and skated toward the refrigerator.

"I can't believe I got everything done!" she sighed to herself unscrewing the cap from one of the water bottles and drinking half of it down as she stood there. Party plans and mental 'to do' lists with all their points crossed off flittered through her mind as she closed the refrigerator door and startled at the face that stood staring at her.

"Damnit Bob! What the hells' wrong with you! You almost gave me a freakin' heart attack…" she shouted then shook her head as he stepped out of the shadow and leaned down over her.

"Sorry baby…" he said holding her eyes with his own and stroked her chin with his finger, "forgive me?"

She nodded, "Duh… I just didn't know you were home that's all…" she grinned and allowed herself to be reeled in for a kiss. She sighed and gazed into his blue/gray eyes. She watched his lids come down as his grip on her chin grew tighter and his eyes opened revealing oily shimmering blackness.

His arms wrapped around her, holding her against him while he nudged her head aside and his teeth sunk into the flesh of her neck severing muscle, tendon, vein, and artery. She tried to scream as one of his hands wrapped around the back of her neck, just under the base of the skull and finished disconnecting her from life.

Moments later he rose to his feet and looked down at his handiwork. Her torso lay bare before him, no "Y" incision to work around this time. The message was clear as could be for the recipient. He had a job to do and so far the only one who didn't seem to be following the beaten path was the one person it was most necessary to eradicate. Killing him wasn't an option, the whole family knew it. Breaking him was the only way to get him out of the way, but he was proving to be far more formidable than first reckoned. The problem was that no one knew how or why. He should've broken in Oklahoma but he hadn't. So now he'd become a messenger, leaving behind a trail of breadcrumbs meant to sap away the strength of a warrior spirit. He wondered how many it would take before this paladin was devoured by his own doing. He didn't know, and honestly he didn't care, he could kill as easily as the body he wore could breathe, what did cause the merest hint of uncertainty though was the understanding that whatever resources his opponent had inside had been grossly underestimated.

"I can still smell him on you even after all this time," he said to the marred corpse on the floor and cocked his head to the side, "I wonder if he'll remember you."

--

Sam paced his motel room, his phone pressed hard to the side of his head, his jaw clenching in frustration. He was furious, some at their allies, but mostly at himself for having listened to their advice. In fact he was so angry and preoccupied with his storming he didn't hear the faint 'tick'-ish sound of the flimsy doorknob lock being picked, "… I know it's not easy but you're the one who put me on to this, you're the one who suggested I leave Dean with her and now she's not there! He's alone Shep! Damnit I never should've listened to you… y'know every damned time we start trying to do something the way you guys would it just frells us up straight to hell! When are you guys gonna stop trying to make the big decisions for us!" he yelled angrily, his oven-mitt sized hand squeezing as if the phone was a stress ball. He listened for barely a moment while shaking his head, "No… no I'm not, I'm going to hang up this phone and do what I should've done from the moment you e-mailed me that clip, I'm going to tell Dean and wait for him to get here and we're going to work this in our own way!"

"No Sammy, you're not…"

Sam wheeled at the sound of that voice and found himself staring deep into those brown eyes he'd gone toe to toe with on so many occasions in his life.

"Dad…" he ended the call and stood staring, "… like hell I'm not…"

--

tbc?

still think I should keep going, or do y'all think I'm reaching a bit here?

sifi


	4. Chapter 4

Solitary Man chpt 4

by sifi

--

"For all the times Dean has been there for you, at least hear me out," John asked, actually asked instead of ordered his youngest son. He stepped over the line of salt and closed the door behind himself, shrugging out of his jacket and hanging it on the back of the chair at the table.

He motioned to a chair looking askance at Sam who nodded, stunned speechless by this unusual behavior. He almost wanted to stick a thermometer into his mouth or shoot some holy water up his nose while shouting "Christo," still he stayed those impulses and sat across from his dad, phone in his casted hand while he reached into a bag with his left and pulled out two bottles of beer.

"Thanks…" John nodded, "lemme get that," he offered opening Sam's bottle while his eyes flicked over the green and dark blue bars across his throat.

"Don't make me shoot you with one of the Red Bird bullets… they work y'know…" Sam huffed good-naturedly but watched John's expression intensely. His father simply gave a half smile similar to the one his eldest son had perfected.

"Dean left me a message thanks…" he nodded, "Listen Sam I know you want to call him, I know you think he should be here, that he has a right to know what you're doing, and under normal circumstances I'd agree with you, no question about it…"

"But?" Sam asking knowing it fit perfectly there.

"But… you don't know the whole story either…" he began.

"You told Shep to send that clip to me, you told him to persuade me to check this out alone didn't you?" Sam asked. He didn't need John to confirm, he knew all too well how his father operated.

"I did," John admitted.

Sam could barely hear his father for the rushing in his ears, with his heart rate nearing 'speed metal' levels he took a deep breath, literally clamped down on his tongue and bored his consternation into John's eyes. He took a sip from his beer, set it down carefully and worked hard to choose his words just right and keep his tone as neutral as possible, "Do you have any idea what we've been through in the last week?"

John looked at the cast on Sam's right hand, "Only the basics and what the hospitals know," he admitted softly.

"You want me to continue to lie to my brother… it wasn't bad enough I lied for a year and a half to the woman I was going to ask to marry me, now you want me to lie to my own brother… I hope this is good," he invited John to begin his story.

"I don't have all the details myself Sam, but I know that something is trying to… I don't know… break your brother… drive him crazy… I don't know for sure…" John stopped, none of this was coming out the way he needed it to, he needed to convince his youngest that the greatest good would be served by working behind his brothers back but damn! _Sammy's really got 'the look' down… or maybe he's just…right. _

"I'm listening… unless you want me to get Dean on the phone so you can explain it to us both?" he asked.

John shook his head and swigged on the beer then dropped his eyes, barely able to meet Sam's gaze, _in all the fights, all the near knock down drag outs we've had… I've never seen him look like this…_ "The body you went to see yesterday, that lady, Carol Guinardi? There was something about her that must've meant something to your brother… Something that got **their** attention… Bobby called me not long after you called him and told him your suspicions… None of us knew it was possible but Bobby found… well you know what he found, he's the one who told you to go back and re-translate the ritual into the earliest known Latin so…"

Sam took a sip from his bottle then set it down on the table and looked at his father with a mixture of accusation and suspicion that cut John to the quick. He thought, he'd hoped that they'd been making progress over the last few months, especially considering how much they'd lost to Big Bad and his kin, and how much they'd both been slapped in the face with nearly losing.

John had only recently found out that it was Laura and her gift of influence that had probably saved both his and Dean's life, and he'd witnessed with his own eyes just what she was willing to sacrifice for his children. He'd watched his youngest son, albeit possessed by some young Demon-ling slowly, millimeter by millimeter force a dagger through her throat until he, Dean and Bobby all thought she was certainly dead. He'd felt the energy between her and Dean and its tag was unmistakable even if his son refused to acknowledge it for as long as he lived, and now something was about to try and tear his boy apart from within.

"Dad…" Sam snapped bringing John back from his reverie.

"Huh… sorry…"

"Either give me a GOOD reason or I will call him… I know he'll forgive **me**… can you say the same?" Sam asked playing his hand more ruthlessly than either had known him capable of. But this was Dean they were talking about, not some petty hierarchal grievance that called for a testosterone hosing.

"Right… all I can say for sure is that this last case you two worked started some kind of… alert… among the malevolent entities out there…You told Shep that this Edward Jacob Simons was a serial killer who basically got you two to use the ritual Romano to open some kind of channel it used to imbue itself with demonic power right?" he asked needing to make sure he knew what he thought he knew.

Sam nodded, "That's what we figured yeah…"

"Okay so once it achieved what it apparently wanted, which was status as a demon it tried to raise another spirit, another serial killer? This Aaron Beyers right?" he asked.

"Yeah," Sam acknowledged keeping his cards as close to the vest as he could. It had taken him literally being in Eddy Jay's hands, being exposed to the tormented screams and pleas of the only person who mattered more to him than life, for him to even realize that there were pieces to put together let alone actually get most of the puzzle done. He'd meant it when he'd told Dean he didn't need to know. What he found out was enough, what he'd pieced together was enough. One of the first defensive moves John had taught his boys was a palm strike to the nose to force the septum back into the brain, another was the strike that would dislodge the jawbone of the enemy and leave it pressed against that vital artery that fed the brain its oxygen supply. Somehow though, it surprised him that John showed no sign of really realizing what might have happened during that summer.

"Well, you boys lured both spirits to Aaron's grave and torched them both, right?" he double checked his facts.

Sam nodded, "Right,"

"Okay so… you saw this woman's body right? This Carol Guinardi? She was the one who was a victim of this Edward Simons right? So… when you boys were trying to exorcise him from her house, he must've gotten something off you or your brother, something that made him focus on you two rather than her…"

"Well, it's definitely possible…" Sam shook his head, "He was just a spirit, I thought he was a poltergeist… you know the malevolence… but we found out later he was just a spirit… I don't know how long Dean was out, it could've sensed something in him while he was unconscious… or me after it…" he stopped and shrugged.

"Hung you?" John finished.

"Yeah… felt like forever… I thought Dean was a dream… I…" he stopped and looked down surprised by just how close he'd really come to dying… again. "When he cut me down I couldn't feel anything… I thought it…wasn't real…"

John smiled and laid his hand on Sam's shoulder, "Thank God it was."

"Yeah… sooooo…" he prodded with a 'give me more' motion.

"A friend of a friend told Shep about the scribing, Told him it was some numbers and the letters DW… even told him the name of the deceased… so much for HIPPA huh?" he sighed, "So…"

"Shep recognized the name from our case, recognized the DW, put one and one together and decided to ask **you** how to handle it since it concerned **us**…" Sam finished with just a hint of bite in his voice.

"Right…and I told him to set you on the trail…I figured someone out there had finally decided it was time to take out your brother…" John pursed his lips around his beer bottle, his eyes never leaving Sam's. His youngest needed to know why he'd asked him to betray his brother and God help him, he hoped his logic could stand up in the stark light of Sam's own reasoning.

"Why would you even come anywhere NEAR making an assumption like that? What aren't you telling us Dad?" Sam asked trying to contain his anger which still boiled just under the surface. _This Need-To-Know crap has got to stop! He's gonna get us killed one day!_ Sam fumed but shoved it down deep, knowing that at this moment information was more important than opinion.

John finished his beer and opened another for each of them, "The Demon," he said softly.

"The Demon? OUR Demon?" Sam asked.

John nodded and scrubbed his face with his hands, "For about a month after your mother was killed Dean had nightmares… terrible, horrible nightmares, he'd wake up screaming and crying and … so… tormented… he couldn't sleep unless exhaustion forced him to… he was… almost scary... especially when it came to you… I mean if I went to change a diaper he watched me like a hawk… like I might… hurt you or something…"

Sam frowned looking at John then kinda shrugged with his head, "Well… huge trauma… and from what he told me, he actually carried me out of the house that night…"

John nodded, "He did… and he was never the same after that night…" he looked up into his youngest sons' clear green eyes, "Part of me thinks he saw what killed your mother that night…" he hastened to add after seeing Sam's jaw drop in disbelief, "…he never said anything about having seen anything… he never said he didn't though either… all I know is that something was tearing him apart, something _inside_ of him was hurting my little boy…"

Sam watched as John's eyes filled and he sniffed back hard, remembering how intensely Raw his entire world had been back then, an open exposed nerve that sang with agony in the gentlest of breezes.

"…and I couldn't stop it…" he admitted.

Sam nodded, silently urging him on.

"By then I'd already met Missouri… she knew Dean was tormented but I didn't know she knew until a few weeks later… I was bringing a book back to her when she gave me something for him, she told me to tell him it would take away the nightmares, the worst ones anyway… She told me it had a power and that it's power had a purpose… but she never told me what that purpose was…and to be honest… I didn't care…"

"The pendant?" Sam asked and watched John nod silently, "What was the purpose dad?"

"I didn't really find out until years later…" he shook his head, "I don't know if it was because I didn't want to know, or because I really didn't make the connection… by then I was already so accustomed to his protectiveness…" he sighed and met Sam's inquisitive gaze, "…the night I gave it to him… he saw me standing at your crib…" he smiled and his eyes filled with pride, "… he came out of bed swinging like a mad man… I guess in the shadows he didn't recognize me…I told him how proud of him I was… and it was true Sam… and that I had a gift for him… I tied the pendant around his neck and told him it was a good luck charm to take away the bad dreams… most of them anyway… and he looked at me, the way he does sometimes?" he asked and Sam nodded knowing exactly what he was talking about, that innocence, that child-like honesty that never failed to shine through Dean's eyes no matter what his mouth was saying, "… he asked… god I can hear his voice ask it even now… he asked if the pendant could mean that he was a protector too…" John's breath hitched hard, "…I thought it was just a child's need to feel special Sam…"

"What dad?" Sam prodded after a long silent moment began to yawn between them.

"Do you remember in the cabin, what the Demon said to him?" John asked. He could never forget the horrible things that creature had said to his boy, those vicious lies that were meant to disable and weather away at even the most stoic of hearts.

"Which thing?" Sam asked.

"When it said to him, 'you need them more than they need you...'?"

Sam's head instantly bowed and his eyes lowered as he wet his suddenly parched mouth, "Yeah… I remember that…"

"We both know it was the worst kind of lie…" John said softly and thought about all the times Dean had come between him and Sam, how many times he'd sacrificed his needs, his pride, his very will for the good of their tiny, broken, but still good, family.

"Yeah…" Sam nodded, "…the kind he might believe…"

"Yeah…" John nodded.

"So… you're saying that talisman, the meaning that had power… what? It came to power because Dean wanted to feel special as a child?" Sam asked.

John shrugged, "I'm saying, that power had a purpose… and something in your brother… activated that power AND that purpose…"

"You're saying the pendant changed him…" Sam surmised.

"NO! No Sam… not at all… it… it augmented him…he already felt responsible for your safety, he felt like he should be able to be my right hand… he felt such… horrible responsibility… and I don't know if I can ever be forgiven for it… but I fed it in him… and now… he's so much his own man… I look at both of you and wonder how I ever deserved…" he stopped once more, squeezing his eyes shut against the tears that threatened as they had on that long ago night, to overspill. He could almost feel Dean's four year old hand wiping the recalcitrant drop away and trying to give comfort, _"It's okay daddy… don't cry…"_ he heard in the back of his head and wanted nothing more than to hold his young son against him once more, as innocent as he'd been that night.

--

tbc – I won't ask whether it should or not anymore

I'm hope this is engaging, but if it's boring please advise and I'll

wrap up the rest of the expo quickly in chpt 5.

thanks

sifi


	5. Chapter 5

Solitary Man chpt 5

by: sifi

--

"So why now?" Sam asked, "Why is the underworld so hot after Dean all of a sudden?"

John shook his head, "I don't know for sure but again, it goes back to this last case you guys worked, there was something about it… I think maybe something sensed… I don't know… a vulnerability? Something that could be used to take him down, to get him out of the way…"

"You mean so it could come after me?" Sam asked feeling his guts clench with apprehension.

"I mean so it could go after anyone it wants without having to worry about any of us on its back… be it you, Billyjoejimbob, or Suite Judy Blue Eyes…. your brothers' nature…." he stopped short and met Sam's eyes, "… Dean was about eight, you were four-ish… you guys were tossing a ball around on the sidewalk in front of the motel. There was another family staying there, one with a son about your age… I don't know where the parents were but the boy came outside and I guess he wanted to play too… he started across the parking lot…I was inside and I heard your brother tell you to freeze… by the time I got to the window it was… man it was like one of those T.V. moments… everything in slow motion and too fast to stop… I saw Dean run… then all I saw was car. I waited for it, wasn't even sure if I missed the 'thump'… I hadn't even gotten to the door and the car was speeding away, the driver laying on the horn, and on the other side of the lot… God only knows how the driver missed him… was Dean with this little kid hanging off his neck like a monkey…"

Sam leaned back and breathed a sigh of relief, as if he'd just seen the instance with his own eyes. He tilted the bottle to his lips, and saw it happen over again in his minds' eye. There was no doubt in his mind, Dean would run in front of a car to save someone if he could, _Dad's right… it IS his nature…_

Sam felt something warming in his chest as he looked at his dad, his face a swirl of disbelief and disappointment, "And you had Shep convince me to leave him! To walk away from him knowing that something was out there trying to break him down!" he tried to control his voice but he was close to careening out of control.

"Sam, I thought… I hoped Laura would be able to stay with him, keep him safe while you looked into this… you know he would've been safe with her…"

"Was she in on this too!" Sam yelled in the fierce bass that spoke of the depth of his emotion.

John shook his head quickly and looked into Sam's eyes, his own pleading, "No… she had no idea what I had Shep ask you to do…I had hoped she'd be able to stick around a bit though…"

"What drew her away?" Sam asked, his voice icy needles that shot deep.

John shook his head, "I don't know… she works on a different… level… she's beholden to a deity Sam… I should have told her though… I should have asked her if she could stay with him, if she _would_ stay with him…"

"She would have," Sam nodded then spoke softly, "… but no one person is capable of serving two masters… if she'd been called she would've had to go… that was part of the price she had to pay to break the curse and free **her** brother…"

John looked intensely at Sam and felt his heart fill with pride. _He's so full of promise and empathy…I wish I could take credit for it…_ he thought pressing his lips together, trying to rein in his emotions.

_So much like Dean…_Sam thought watching his father's face move through the emotional spectrum, _If only he had Dean's faith…the faith that I betrayed…_ he felt tears sting in the corners of his eyes, _Dean I'm so sorry…I never meant to hurt you… I just wanted to protect you…like you've always done for me… I just wanted to carry my own weight (boy you're gonna carry that weight a long time…)_ he heard from behind some dark recess, _huh, great song…_ he thought in the back of his mind knowing his older brother would approve.

--

In his motel room, stretched out on the uncomfortably small single bed, his toes sticking over the edge Dean moaned, his mind purring, just waiting for him to press down on the accelerator and open himself up to all he kept so tightly locked away.

--

Sam shook his head, his fists clenching hard, itching to grab his dad and slam him up against the wall, or to put his own fist through the wall and hope he broke something just to feel the smallest amount of penance for what he'd done. He nodded his head, his eyes glassy as he bit his lip and pinned his father to the spot with his gaze, "…damn you to hell for putting Shep up to this… damn you both for convincing me to leave him alone, unprotected, unguarded…" the more he thought about it the angrier he got until he rose to his feet slamming his hands down onto the table top, the cast making an obscene amount of noise while pain shot through his palm and up into his elbow, "… and to hell with me for falling for it."

John nodded shame faced and rose to his feet, he slung his jacket on and stuffed his hands down deep into the pockets, "Sam…"

Sam shook his head, "Just leave dad… do what you do best."

John felt another brick in the cornerstone of his world slowly grinding into powder beneath Sam's anger, "Right now your brothers state of mind is the only thing protecting him, his confusion, his anger, his… hurt it all serves to give him focus Sam… that focus is protecting him more than your physical presence can…if you contact him, if you take that focus away from him he'll be vulnerable, open to attack…"

"So what am I supposed to do dad?" Sam stormed, "Leave him alone forever? Never see my brother again? Is that what you want?... hasn't the last year taught you anything? Are you really that… what is it? Stubborn or arrogant dad? Which one? Cause they both fit!" he leaned toward his father, nearly nose to nose, "When are you gonna understand? Get it through that thick head of yours? We are stronger together than we could ever be alone!"

"Find the pattern, find out what the vulnerability is… what made this woman special? Did he know her? Did he have an affair with her? Why would she matter that much to him?" he asked.

Slowly, in the timeline of his mind Sam watched a thick black line begin to connect the dots, many of which his own father didn't know existed.

_She mattered so much to him because he couldn't help her, because she endured something he couldn't take away or make better, because she lived her life in a kind of fear he once got a glimpse of, but you don't know that do you? You, the master of pattern finding never saw what was right in front of your face did you? Hey, neither did I Dad, at least on that point we're even… "…nine hundred eighty seven pictures, sixty one different faces…" _he heard Dean's voice, small and rhythmic from a dark hole in his mind. The way he must've heard it while they were in their cells, _"…twelve burned... no evidence, never happened…"_

When Sam opened his eyes again he was on his knees, his face pressed into his palms with John kneeling at his side.

"What is it? What's wrong?" he asked frightened by Sam's near collapse to the floor.

"Pain…" Sam breathed as the present time retreated and he found himself standing under the deep dark of late night summer sky. He was in a yard he didn't recognize and a young Dean was standing at his left, his face stony and empty, his eyes blank hard obsidian in the night. There was the sound of something being sprayed just before a light flared and yellow flame erupted before his eyes, blinding him temporarily. He shook his head blinking hard then looked into the flame. It was a single person grill on top of a picnic table and inside the flame, black smoky edges curled and turned to ash before his eyes. He watched the image of his teenage brother hitch his pack onto his shoulders and reached out to him. His hand touched Dean's shoulder and moved through it as the boy strode from the grill, the yard, and the house out into the night, alone.

John's heart skipped in his chest as Sam shook his head, his eyes far away and his mind in some other place while he backpedaled across the room, a tight grunt escaping from his throat every now and then. He could see his boy was shaking, he was pale and his fear was a palpable thing brought to life in the room with them.

He followed Sam, and when he could go no further, wedged between the bed and the nightstand John reached out to him.

"Nuho! Don't…" Sam's hands flailed batting his away while his head shook, trying to negate whatever it was he was seeing, "…don't touch me!" he shouted gasping and nearly clocking John with his cast.

"Sam!" John barked once he had a good grip on both of his hands. He knew the instant his son returned from wherever he'd been, he saw it in Sam's eyes, heard it in the deepening of his breath and felt it when he slid back against the wall, exhausted.

--

Dean walked into the Sedalia County morgue and shook hands with Dr. Davies.

"Detective Taylor… nice to meet you…" he motioned Dean through the door toward the hall. "Well, Miss Guinardi is certainly getting more than her fair share of visitors… which non-jurisdiction did you say you were from?" he asked.

"Bisbee Arizona… we had case similar to this a few weeks back, though…" he nodded his head knowingly, "…we've been keeping it quiet but we're running out of leads…"

"So… this guy's striking in a lot of different places then?" Dr. Davies asked leading him back to the refrigerator.

"Too many…" Dean nodded.

"Let me see, that makes four places now?"

"Four?" Dean asked.

Dr. Davies nodded his weathered head, "Yep, with the news this morning… we have this one here, yours in Bisbee… just a couple days ago another detective from upstate New York, and then this morning a woman in Chicago was found with post mortem scribing, they're not saying much about it either but either this guy gets around or there's more than one of 'em…"

Dean swallowed hard and rolled up onto the balls of his feet trying to get his blood flowing again, _Chicago now too? New York had to be Sammy… at least I'm on the right track I think…_ "Say Dr. Davies, that detective from New York… about six five, dark hair… kind eyes…"

Dr. Davies nodded, "Yes, Detective Rodgers…. you know him?"

"Yeah…" Dean smiled tightly, "We go way back…he uh… didn't happen to say where he was going after leaving here did he?"

"Nahp," the older man shook his head, "…just had this look, kind of a lost look after I showed him the body… not that you ever really get used to something like this…" he shrugged and rolled the sheet back.

Dean felt his pores open and despite the temperature in the refrigerator, unleash a flood of sweat as he held tight to a tremor that was screaming to rock his whole body.

_987 DW… not even subtle… but is it Eddy Jay? cause it can't be Aaron… I watched his spirit consumed… but who, or what else would know that number? Eddy Jay would, he was inside my head… I could've sworn those bullets worked! I saw the lightning just like when dad shot Luther… heh… vampires… and like when Sammy shot dad in the cabin… I saw it…and I saw him go down… so who's idea of a sick joke is this? the Demon? Another one of its kids… son of a bitch…Okay… he said Chicago… Meg… yeah Meg's dead that's for sure…God what if none of them are really dead?_

"Detective?" Dr. Davies asked softly.

"Yeah… uh you said Chicago?" he asked and nodded with the Medical Examiner, "Cook County Morgue right?"

"Far as I know," he nodded.

Dean grasped the man's hand and shook it firmly, "Thanks doc…" and strode purposefully out into the parking lot.

_I should just hop a plane… I might be able to cut Sam off in Chicago…if I could just get myself onto a plane…_he tried to goad himself but it was no use, after their phantom traveler incident Dean was even more determined that humans were not meant to fly, _besides, I'm only about nine hours away… seven if don't hit traffic…_he cocked a half smile and slid Metallica's Ride The Lightning into the tape deck then cranked up the volume and pulled out onto road.

----

tbc…

Please, I know it's a little slow but there are meat and potatoes to come.

Thanks.

sifi


	6. Chapter 6

Solitary Man – chpt 6

By: sifi

John looked up from the computer screen, Sam was still out and still, if his moaning and occasionally flopping arm was any indication, tormented. John's eyes moved from his son's pale frowning face to his feet that were barely on the bed despite how high his knees were tucked up. _A single is way too small for him…_he thought absently and returned to his e-mail account where he clicked on a letter from Shep.

A scan of a news story from a Chicago paper appeared on the screen and as he read it he not only knew where he and Sam had to go, but where Dean would be. Neither of his boys were unintelligent, Dean was certain to have found the clip about the Guinardi woman and now he would be alert to what to look for. John had no doubt he would follow these scribing incidents, and he knew that if he didn't find a way to act fast, to stop whatever had been set to killing these women that could be connected to his son, that every subsequent death would accomplish the Demon's mission in very little time.

"Dean!" Sam barked and bolted upright startling John's heart into his throat.

Sam blinked the dream out of his head and sighed, not sure if he could believe his eyes, "You're still here?"

John nodded, "You better?"

"Yeah… just a… memory…" he explained haltingly. John had no idea what they'd been put through, the screams Eddy Jay and the memories he stirred up dragged out of his eldest boy, but Sam knew Dean would never want his father to know about them either. It was bad enough Sam knew, but at least they had the shared experience, John hadn't been there, he didn't know this particular hurt.

"…and last night… was that a vision?" he asked.

Sam nodded, "… of the past… retrocognitive I guess… nothing important…"

John cocked an eyebrow, "Nothing important?"

"Can't change the past dad…" Sam muttered sliding off the bed and into the bathroom, effectively ending any further questions for the time being.

--

Dean sat at one of the branches of the Chicago Public Library searching for anything he could find on post mortem body scribing. He searched for the timing of the incidents, the locations, gender of victims, anything that could point definitively to a specific entity and on a small single page map of the U.S. began to plot locations. His eyes flicked to the clock on the wall and he set the alarm on his cell phone. He had an appointment at the morgue in just over three hours to see the body of Trish Harris. He closed his eyes and bowed his head slightly then opened his phone and scrolled through his phonebook until he found her number and her picture. _I'm sorry…please don't let this be the start of a pattern…two women…I mean so I'm not really the player I like the guys to think but there's nothing wrong with having some fun… every soldier needs a little leave once in a while…Trish was fun…_he nodded and sighed. They'd played Skee ball down at Navy Pier and tilted a pinball machine macking until they couldn't stand it anymore and retired to a nearby hotel. _Please don't let this be the start of a pattern…_he reiterated and continued plotting his points until the alarm sounded and he made his way to the Cook County Medical Examiner's Office.

--

Sam pulled out of the motel lot, his direction a generalized Easterly one, toward Chicago as his dad turned the opposite direction, heading back to Nebraska, back to Bobbys' to see what they could find out about where this thing might show up next. As his father's truck shrank to nothingness behind him Sam reached into his jacket pocket and checked his cell phone. There were no new messages. The last time he'd heard from Dean was the previous day, another message to call him, let him know where he was, if he was okay.

He highlighted Dean's phone number and his thumb hovered over the 'send' button. He'd promised John not two hours ago that he'd leave Dean investigating this thing on his own, as they both knew he was doing, he insisted that Dean needed the emotional turmoil to keep his defenses up, his guard tight against any kind of psychic attack. The higher his guard the less effect any subsequent deaths would have at the immediate moment. It sounded good, it sounded convincing, _But it feels so wrong…_ he shook his head, _This isn't right… this hasn't been right since the get-go…Dean is alone, he hates to be alone, he's… it's not right…_ Sam felt his thumb twitch.

--

Dean followed the tech back into the refrigerator, this one, five times the size of the one in Sedalia with no less than ten sets of free standing shelving units, each unit with at least sixteen slots, each slot capable of holding several corpses. This was Chicago after all. She led him to one of the two dozen gurneys that lined the walls, (the shelves were full) picking up sheets along the way to check the faces.

_No tidy little checking the toe tags here…_he thought and wondered how a sane person could work in a place like this five days a week until retirement. _I'll take hunting thanks…_

"Here you go," she smiled kindly, and rolled the sheet down over Trish Harris' torso stopping at the crest of her pelvis.

Dean saw the butterfly tattoo peeking out from under the sheet on the left hip and nodded to himself.

He drew his eyes up to her belly and gazed at the same message, the same 'writing', everything was identical to the scribing on Carol's corpse.

"Can I get a copy of her face sheet?" he asked knowing it would have her address and all of her vital statistics on it.

The tech looked at him, "Sure, your papers don't list any information restrictions so I don't see why not,"

"Thanks," he nodded.

"You done?" she asked.

He licked his lips and nodded silently, _Not that you probably will Trish, but rest in peace…I'll find what did this and kill it, don't you worry._ _How many more am I going to have to make that promise to before this is over?_ he wondered.

"What about the boyfriend?" he asked.

The tech sighed, "He's already been claimed… pretty clear cut suicide… hung himself with the belt from a bathrobe after he killed her and did that… least that's what the report said…" she looked at him and grunted, "Lemme guess you want a copy of that too?"

"If it's not too much trouble," he nodded somberly.

"Come on," she directed leading him from the refrigerator, back to her office where she directed him to sit and handed him a glass of water from the cooler.

"Thanks," he nodded feeling his hands tremble just a bit. He couldn't remember any time when he'd been surrounded by so many bodies. He'd noticed an organizational process in there, the rear shelves stacked with infants and children, then teens, apparently causes of death still under investigation until closest to the main entrance was primarily elderly and suspicious deaths. He just couldn't believe the amount of bodies in there and the smell was getting to him. He'd tried the camphor under the nose bit once and found it just opened up his sinuses more and made the smell more pungent. He wondered how long he was going to be tasting this place after he left.

"Don't get a lot of bodies out in Bisbee huh?" she asked returning from wherever she'd gone and sliding the copies he'd asked for into a manila envelope.

"Not that many," he smiled wanly, his pallor a dead giveaway to her practiced eye.

"Listen, I've been in this job over twenty years Detective, I've seen the biggest boys from the roughest towns go down in here… all things considered you did better than I expected,"

"Thanks I think," he looked up into her frank, unassuming countenance.

"Don't go thinking for a minute though that I can't tell when a case is personal to a cop, but this… it's gonna hurt you if you don't find a way to deal with whatever ghost you got on your shoulder… I'm just sayin…" she shrugged handing him the envelope and holding the door open, the gesture certainly not lost on Dean who rose with a deep breath and extended his hand to her.

"Thanks…I think I needed to hear that," he smiled a little more warmly and followed her out of the maze and to the main entrance.

"We aim to please," she smiled, "Good luck Detective…"

Dean nodded and stepped out into the grotesque humidity of the day breaking into an instant sweat as he shrugged out of his suit coat and loosened his tie. He turned, the sound of a siren approaching and looked down the street at Cook County Hospital where two ambulances barked their sirens at meandering pedestrians who refused to hustle their butts across the street to allow them through any faster. Dean shook his head, _Nice town._ He opened the door to the Impala and slid behind the wheel opening the windows to let out some of the oppressive heat.

While his baby's engine warmed up and the air conditioner started to cool the car he opened the envelope she'd given him and started to sift through the information.

He didn't know how long he'd been sitting there reading through the photocopied pages but when his cell phone chirped to life he actually jumped.

He looked at the incoming number and smiled, "Hi," he greeted.

"Hi yourself… I told you I'd call you back," her voice stroked him gently.

"You okay? What was that thing?" he asked closing the door as the a/c finally started to kick out some coolness.

"Gargoyle… and not the benevolent cartoon kind…how goes the searching? Heard from anyone yet?" she asked and he heard a small buckle of tension in her voice.

"Not yet… I'm kinda getting the feeling they're avoiding me, whatever it is they think they're doing… I guess I'll find out eventually. Right now though I got other fish to fry. You sound like you're hurt?" he asked.

"Ackh… just a little dented… nothing that won't make me shout out in pain a few times before I get sick of hearing my own voice and decide to let it go," she explained and he could hear the smile in her voice, frosted glass on the cabinet door that shielded him from any genuine pain he might sense. "So… what happened with your friend Carol? and… before you tell me anything I need to tell you, I was checking hot news stories on line this morning… there was a scribing incident in Chicago you might want to check out,"

Dean spent the next ten minutes filling her in on everything that had transpired so far while his heart weighed heavy in his chest.

"I just wish I knew why y'know? I mean I never expect to hear back from dad anymore, not even when he finds the Demon y'know? I've pretty much relegated myself to the fact that he's going to try and go after it himself and probably get himself killed in the process… Shep and Bobby…" he shook his head, "I don't know if they're avoiding me or if they're just busy… sometimes they don't get back to us for days…"

"Yeah but Sam's the monkey wrench, he only ever went 'missing' when those inbreds kidnapped him right? I mean you guys have been pretty inseparable since you picked him up at college… so… what would make him do this?" she asked.

"I don't know," he admitted and cleared his throat, "You know it's funny Laura, I really feel like I'm going to find him, like we're going to wind up walking the same line from different directions or something… geez you must be rubbing off on me…"

"Mmmm darlin' don't you say that word when I'm not around…" she moaned then chuckled playfully, "Well if you feel it, you're probably right… I mean you don't sound as frantic as you did the other night so that's a good."

He nodded to himself, "I don't feel quite as frantic… just… kinda… like I'm missing something… oh gee, go figure I _am_ missing something…" he snarked and felt himself chuckle. It felt good to chuckle a bit with everything running through his head, "I'm tempted to just stay in the car in the parking lot here and wait for Sam to show up… I know he will, then I can smack the living crap out of him for scaring me like this…"

"Do you want… I mean could you use… you know…" she started. The last thing she would ever want to do was inundate someone with her presence. Let alone someone she loved, "If you do all you have to do is say the word… and you're going to have to say the word because my pride takes priority over yours… I'm the girl."

Dean felt his mouth stretch into a huge grin and he ruptured out a couple of full laughs before he shook his head. _Damn… she's got a way that's for sure…_ "What about your gargoyle problem?"

"Well, one of 'em's sidewalk material… and the female, you know I've heard they can be real bitches… she wants me… there's nowhere I can hide,"

"So you're going to have to go up against her?" he asked.

"Yeah, it's pretty much a given…I don't know what the hell they expected when they started pulling a pissed off Bartleby and decided that playing citywide hopscotch with people was a good idea… but, then again… I'm not made of stone…so…"

"Go figure…" Dean smiled and heard the call waiting click in his ear.

His heart skipped a beat and took off at a racetrack gallop, "Laura I'll call you back…"

"Call me if you need me," she said. The smile in her voice telling him all he needed to hear.

Dean switched the line, his ears rushing with blood, "Sammy are you okay? Where the hell are you?" he gasped and felt rather than heard a puffy 'whump' 'whump' 'whump' at almost he same time as one of the Impala's windows shattered and he felt himself flatten across the front seat reflexively as blood ran into his eye.

"Dean? Dean!" Sammy called on the other end of the line.

--

tbc –

Please… am I getting to you?

Cause I'm trying…

And thank you.

sifi


	7. Chapter 7

Solitary Man – chpt 7

by: sifi

"Dean! Talk to me!" Sam called out and for an instant Dean felt like hanging up. _Let him worry for a change, see what it feels like… selfish freakin' bastard! _

"Yeah I'm here…" he groaned sitting up and dusting the cubes of safety glass off himself, "Damnit! Lost another window! My poor baby…" he stroked the dash and watched a trio of police cars whip by, closing in on the hospital. In his ear, Sammy was rocketing questions he felt more than just a little disinclined to answer.

Turning the rear view mirror after patting himself down to make sure he wasn't sporting any deadly holes in his person, he looked for the source of the blood on his face. He wiped the side of his head which now bore numerous scratches from the glass as it shattered.

"Shut up Sam…" he snarled feeling the heat of his anger boiling up from his depths, "Just shut the hell up… I don't even know why I'm bothering to talk to you…"

"Dean… I'm sorry…Look I promised dad I wouldn't call you, I wouldn't talk to you until we figured out a way to handle this but I couldn't…I couldn't keep it…" Sam stammered.

Dean felt his belly quiver as a shaky chuckle of disbelief huffed quietly out, "Dad was in on this?"

"Yeah… look Dean there's stuff going on you don't know…Where are you? Are you in Chicago?" Sam pleaded.

He palmed the blood off his face and sighed watching his hand tremble while his lips started to go numb from pressing them together so hard and he nodded, "Y'know what Sam?"

"What?" Sam asked almost timidly on the other end of the line as Dean pressed 'end' and shut the phone off.

"Later," he breathed and pulled out of the parking lot.

"_You know you already forgive him…" _he heard Laura's voice smiling softly in his head, _Yeah, I know…and thank God he's alright…but I'm so damn mad right now… let him sweat a little. "I suppose that's probably fair… it's not nice… but it's probably fair," Yeah, it's fair. _He nodded to himself and drove out of the city proper where he found an inexpensive motel for the night.

--

Dean sat in his room, sheets of information spread on the table before him deep in the process with the pen in his mouth and the T.V. on in the background. Sam always crabbed that it was a distraction while he was doing his research or fact checking but Dean found it soothing. Silence was a distraction to him. A pinch in the new tissue on his belly drew him out of the comfortable dark recess that was his nap.

He sat up straight feeling his spine pop in a few places as he did so and looked at the clock on the nightstand. _9:21… still early…that's good…I think I saw a bar down the street when I pulled in… I think it's time for a little fun, hustle a little pool, throw some darts, maybe pick up a girl…_his belly clenched inside at the thought, _Yeah… that'd be great, get another innocent person killed…oh man!_ his breath stopped in his throat, _Laura and Cassie…Laura will probably know enough to be on the look out…no "probably" isn't good enough…_ he pulled out his cell and dialed Laura first. He didn't know whether or not he'd get her voice mail, but when it kicked over he wasn't surprised. She was after all, working a case. He left her a message to keep her eyes open just in case whatever was doing this was targeting people who meant anything to him and reluctantly disconnected the line. He dialed Cassie's number, his mind racing as the phone on her end rang, _Yeah, this is gonna be great… hi Cassie… how've you been? Has anything evil come to try and kill you and carve things into your corpse? Oh well, I just wanted you to know that could happen cause you know, we had a relationship and there's something out there killing and carving women I've cared about or… slept with… _he shook his head and pursed his lips. The phone kept ringing, _Oh God… please answer please answer please answer please answer…._ He thought, prepared to visualize the worst as the answering machine finally clicked on.

"Cassie! Cassie it's Dean pick up if you're there!" he instructed firmly, waited a moment and repeated himself.

"I'm here… I'm here Dean…hold on I just gotta put this bag down…" she answered breathlessly, "…there…okay, I'm back… what's up?" she asked.

Dean sighed audibly and began to break the news that she could be in danger. He spent the next twenty minutes on the phone with her as she fortified the doors of her house with salt and made the rest of the place as secure as possible, just as he instructed.

Once he was satisfied that Cassie's corner of the world was as secure as it could be considering the circumstances, he sat scrolling through his phone book, counting but continuing past the ten messages from his brother, the most recent being about an hour ago. He needed to put names and faces to locations and thereby approximate dates. _I should call him back… or at least answer the next time he calls…_ he thought then noticed something a little strange, _Huh…go figure…well it's not like I've really been myself since the…Since the night we almost died?_ the harsh little voice inside him sneered, _yeah… since then. Still, that's kinda weird…but I didn't even know her then,_ he thought. The night he'd spent with Trish had happened on a relatively routine haunting he and Sam had taken care of sometime between that whole Tulpa thing in Richardson Texas, and the issue with the Merchant Family Portrait that had nearly killed Sam and Sarah.

_But it was before Meg almost getting us dead… so it was definitely before Sarah…huh…From that night with Trish to now…Let's see, there was Brandy and her friend Marissa in New York…yeah, nice night…_he smiled to himself and nodded wondering if he should call but running up against a mental kind of brick wall, _they don't even know about any of this, Trish was a friend of the family that was being haunted…crap… so what do I do? _he wondered, _Go to the bar, hustle some pool, get a few bucks into your pocket and head to New York first thing in the morning. _He nodded swiping his jacket off the chair and left to do just that.

--

Sam pulled into the Stevenson Motel his eyes grainy and bleary as he put the car in park and dialed Dean again.

He'd gotten over his incredulity that Dean had hung up on him, and that he'd apparently shut off his phone, and that he hadn't told him where he was when he'd asked. The only plus at this point was that a receptionist at the Cook County Medical Examiner's office had confirmed Dean's arrival at an appointment there this afternoon. _Yeah…cause Chicago's such a one horse town I should see the car as I drive right through Main street… damnit! Dean I'm sorry… but you gotta forgive me, you gotta return one of my calls, or at least listen to the damned messages! Please let me catch up. _

Through the last ten messages he'd left on Dean's voice mail he'd explained over and over again what little they knew about whatever it was that wanted him broken, and he wondered why now, why for this first time he'd actually done what his father suggested and left his brothers side. _Because it came from Shep that's why…Damn that man, he knew exactly how to manipulate me! That's that 'need to know' mentality again, man have I had enough of that! I'm so damned angry I can't even talk to him right now! _he stopped short and chuckled to himself, _Probably pretty much how Dean feels about me…damnit! To use one of his phrases, this sucks out loud!_

He stepped from the car grasping his bag and meandered through the darkened lot into the office to check in.

--

Sparky's bar and grill was NOT one of those happening places a person couldn't resist going into. Dean looked around at the hard worn faces of the men and women around him. He recognized this kind of a crowd, they had their regular place at the bar, it was always the same ones that played the music and the same ones that passed out or shambled drunkenly out the door to narrowly avoid killing someone or themselves in the few short blocks between the bar and home. He shook his head, chewed on his pen cap and returned to the task at hand as the mid-forties trying to look mid-thirties bartender refilled his whiskey, slid her eyes over him in a way that made him oddly uncomfortable and fished out the two fifty from his small stack of cash under his coaster, before swinging her hips a little harder than necessary while returning to the bar proper.

A cheer went up at the bar as a local baseball game was won or lost depending on which team had been bet on and a cloud of smoke puffed past him as someone opened the door. He shook his head and returned to his list. He was making good headway, honing down the list, ruling out gender, location, and timing as his primary signals.

"Dean?" he startled and felt the hand drop onto his shoulder.

"Sam!..." he gasped standing off the stool, unable to stop the enormous grin that told his baby brother the most basic of truths, he was happy to see him and he'd been forgiven. _All it takes is a look_. Sam nearly felt his knees buckle when Dean grabbed him about the neck and hugged him quick and hard. "Dude! How'd you find me in a crap-hole like this?"

Sam shrugged, "The car… she… kinda sticks out… Dean I'm sorry… have you listened to any of the messages I've left you? If what dad was talking about is true then you're in serious danger man…" he said quietly while Dean motioned the bartender for two more drinks.

"No, I've been a little busy trying to figure out what this bastard's next move is gonna be, who he's gonna go after now that he's got my attention… the research has been a little slow going since my partner freakin' ditched me three days ago!" he growled too low for the other patrons to hear.

"How many more times do you want me to say I'm sorry? Do you want me to get on my knees and beg…" Sam asked.

"Dude in a place like this? You get on your knees for anything besides tossing your cookies and God only knows what these folks are gonna think's goin' on…" he joked.

"What happened to your head?" Sam asked smiling at the jibe. If Dean was already messing with him, it was just further proof he'd been forgiven.

"Some damned stray bullet shot out my baby's window by the morgue…did you check in somewhere or just start cruisin' the streets looking for classic cars? Cause you know there's more than a few of 'em in this town…" Dean asked.

"I'm at the Stevenson Motel, just down the street a bit…" he answered and grimaced shifting uncomfortably on his stool as the bartender brought their drinks over and reached for Dean's cash.

"He's buying this round," he instructed placing his hand over his money. "Pay the lady Francis," he cocked the corner of his mouth and piled his papers together in some semblance of order so he could go over them with 'Professor Peabody'.

Sam shook his head and dug out a bill for the woman who winked at him and did the 'hip sway' thing again. Sam watched her walk away trying to hide a look that said, 'my milk has chunks in it…'

Dean noted the look and smiled softly before smacking Sam on the arm, "Hey, look what she has to look at from day to day man… we're a treat,"

Sam shook his head and blinked hard a few times before smiling tightly and feeling his heart pound hard for a second. "I guess… look Dean we need to get back to the motel, we'll pick up some beers or something…" he gasped and clutched at the table, his throat tightening as huge fireworks started going off in his head.

"Sam?" Dean asked watching the color literally wash out of his face as he clutched the edge of the table. _A vision?_ "Sam! What's wrong?" he leaned in close to his ear, "… is it a vision?"

Sam shook his head, bucked off the stool which flew clattering across the entryway catching the unwanted attention of the patrons at the bar who simply sat there staring at these unknowns as if they each had two heads.

"Sam?" Dean barked feeling his weight in his arms as his knees buckled and his body tensed.

Dean looked up, "What the matter with you people! Somebody call an ambulance!" he barked as Sam's eyes rolled back into his head and he began to seize.

At the bar, half a dozen cell phones were picked up as Sam's face turned gray before Dean's eyes. His little brothers' eyes took on a milky cast and Dean's heart began to race, "…it's a Reaper… son of a bitch! Sammy? is it a reaper?" he asked but Sam was already too far gone. He no longer struggled for breath but his body continued to seize and the gray became mottled with vivid patches of blue and purple on the surfaces of his visible skin.

"Sammy!" _God he's dying in front of my Goddamned eyes! Somebody help me! _he grasped the youngest Winchester to him, tears flooding his eyes and spilling onto his face as Sam's body slowly stopped convulsing and in the stillness that had filled the bar Dean heard the faintest shallow hissings of air passing through his Sam. "No… please God... don't do this to me…I need him…"

--

tbc.

Please….opinions of those I care about matter…

Thanks.

sifi


	8. Chapter 8

Solitary Man – chpt 8

by: sifi

--

Dean hopped out of the back of the ambulance and followed the gurney into the hospital. The EMT's had been 'bagging' Sam since they arrived at the bar, that is, squeezing a big rubber bulb with a face mask attached to it, to keep him breathing. They'd had to use the defibrillator twice so far en route and Dean was beyond frantic, moving quickly into that far more comforting realm called shock where everything faded away except the fundamentals of breathing, heartbeat and pain.

He saw, in his minds' eye the shock on the EMT's faces when they arrived, _They asked how long he'd been dead…but they got a heart beat… I saw the little spikes… they were bagging him… keeping that ole Oh-Two flowing… I just got him back…they can't take him from me now…_ his voice was in his head and he showed no resistance as a nurse moved between him and the gurney as it was steered into the first available trauma room and the medical team descended, _They're like vultures on a carcass…_he thought numbly and heard something he was unaccustomed to hearing in an ER, he heard surprise.

"…does anyone else see this?" a nurse asked from behind a feature obscuring mask and splash guard. She was pointing to Sam's exposed chest and abdomen.

Dean's heart squeezed a giant burst of adrenaline laced blood through his body as he shot forward, literally shoving the medical staff out of the way. He grasped the frame of the gurney and refused to be moved, his eyes locked on his little brothers mottled blue and gray torso as familiar white outlines began to appear on his skin. Even as he watched the numbers and letters rise on the motionless body before him, and his eyes caught sight of the likewise motionless line on the screen he could feel something begin to pound inside him. His heartbeat shook his body, that much he could feel but this was the sound of something horrible about to break down some door inside of him.

"Sir… please…" a nurse whispered solemnly in his ear while trying to pry his hands from the steel he needed to squeeze.

He shook his head, his neck creaked, he breathed, his heart pounded, silent tears slid off his chin in drops, their fall to the floor an audible hiss before they exploded on impact.

"Sam…" the name echoed in his head countering that horrible beast that wanted out, or in depending on which way the wind was blowing.

"No…" he turned his head and looked at the nurse, "…it's not supposed to be him… it's supposed to be me…" he looked around the trauma room, catching the eyes of the doctors and nurses present one by one. Their expressions all too telling.

"Do you hear me! It's not supposed to be him!" he cried turning his eyes to the message meant directly for him.

"Sammy!" he sobbed gathering his baby brother into his arms and holding him against his chest like he'd done so many times when they were children and Sam had been scared or even just lonely.

The medical staff eased out of the room knowing grief was a very personal process.

--

Something was horribly wrong, he could feel it as he raced down the hallway, his sight already fixed on the right door even as he heard the protesting. He pounded on the door as hard as he could and called out but there was no answer save the crushing feeling in his still aching chest and the ambiguous sounds of negation.

"Dean!" he called and pounded again and heard his brothers voice cry hoarsely,

"It's not supposed to be him! It's supposed to be me!"

Sam took a look up and down the hall and kicked the door open just as Dean's tortured howl sounded,

"Sammy!"

_Okay that's usually a wake-up call… Come on Dean…wake up now… _Sam urged mentally and nearly dove into the room. The bed was a mess, Dean on the floor nearly mummified by his sheets. Sam grasped his torso and lifted, unwinding the binding sheet, hoping it would help to some extent. "Come on Dean please! Wake up!" he called again grasping him by the shoulders and shaking him. "Damnit!" he cursed tossing him over his shoulder just enough to get him firmly onto the bed. "Son of a bitch!"

"Dean! Wake up!" he even tried to push with his mind, to reach in there but all he could feel was that stereotypical wasteland of despair where nothing grew.

"Come on Dean! Don't do this!" he slapped at his face and had a nasty flashback to Carol Guinardi's house as the pencil sheathed itself into his hand then hung him while Dean was unconscious.

_But this doesn't feel like that unconsciousness…Dean please, snap out of this big brother, I need you here! Fighting Evil… with me… I can't do this alone…_ he pleaded internally and even went so far as to pry open Dean's eye only to find the green that would have met him and glared at him for such an infringement had rolled up and back so far Sam could barely see the darker ring of the outer iris.

_A hospital isn't going to be able to do anything…_he sat beside Dean breathing hard and touched his throat feeling a strong steady pulse despite the shallowness of his breathing. _He just needs a little time…he'll come out of it on his own… what are you seeing in there?_ he wondered as a blue white streak shot across the window.

Sam lurched, his eyes falling on the black shape as it ran across the lot. _Son of a bitch!_ he cursed inside, tapping the pocket of his jacket, assuring himself that the gun was there before he raced out into the hall and slammed through an emergency exit.

Sam stretched his legs following the path he'd seen the figure take. He hoped his dad had been right about them not wanting to kill Dean, _I hope to hell he's right about that one thing 'cause dad I got news for you, you sure haven't been right about much else! Aaahhooowch son of a bitch!_ he heard himself curse as a huge stabbing pain thrust between his eyes and his sight became superimposed with a vision. It was a split second glimpse of a wiry black man running down onto the bank of one of the small "rivers" in the area. _Left…_he realized and continued the chase.

--

Leaping a narrow spot in the stream the demon turned its hosts head and smiled in the shadows as the sound of his pursuer's footsteps drew closer. The images were situated deep in the eldest son's mind, if he managed to come back to reality he should be little more than a psychological jigsaw puzzle about to fall apart. He knew he was supposed to have gone after a few more women and he still might just for fun… he'd learned quite a lot inside the boys head even for just those few minutes after he initially dozed off, but when he'd found the extent to which his biggest trigger was woven into his being, he couldn't have resisted if his 'father' had been right at his side. It was too tempting, and this way, he still got the potential bargaining chip he wanted. Now it was just a matter of time to let the string of events he'd planted to set their roots deep. _Will they go deep enough? That should have been enough to shatter him if everything Eddy told us was true…what a shame to have lost him so soon… it's not every human who learns how to transcend…he could've been quite an asset, but at least he gave us this much…_he had felt resistance at first, that much was true, something metallic that seemed to sing deep inside the boy, it flashed like a streak of silver and then it was gone. He thought he'd gotten around it though, he was pretty sure he had anyway.

_Don't you worry young blood…I'll be back around, gotta keep an eye on my handiwork._ He silently assured Sam who slowed realizing he'd lost his trail.

--

Dean sat slumped in the waiting room chair, there were no more tears in him. He didn't know how long he sat there, each minute he wasn't going to hear his brothers' voice challenge him, or argue about their dad and his tactics, or call him a jerk was going to be an agony. It already was and he was still in shock. He realized that much.

The words he'd spoken into the phone, well choked into the phone circled round his head, _"Dad… I know you're avoiding me…I know you all are… just thought you should know though…It's Sam…You'll find him at Cook County Hospital… or at the Coroner's office a couple doors down… they'll hold the body till you get here…."_

He pushed himself off the chair, his face a mask of stone and emptiness and forced himself not to think about Sammy at the morgue, lined up against the wall, just another untimely suspicious death to be investigated. He wondered if John would show.

He shambled out into the velvet smoothness of just before pre-dawn no more than a wraith among the living. Half of his world was gone and it was doubtful the other half would forgive him for failing.

As he walked down the street what few nocturnes there were even at this hour seemed to avoid him except one. He never even looked up into the black within black eyes of the man who's lean wiry chest he nearly bounced off. He didn't even give his words a second thought as he stepped around him and continued on his way, the words seeming to bounce off of him, "Now that's one cracker that's got some seriously big bad demons all up in his head…" as he continued walking his path, Dean didn't notice the laughter either.

--

Sam sat in the chair he'd pulled up next to Dean's bed his left hand resting on his brothers shoulder and the fingers of his right hand pinching the bridge of his nose, it wasn't visions, he hadn't had another after losing the lanky man by the river, it was the strain of trying to reach through the turmoil inside. Whatever was going on in Dean's head Sam could feel its weight bearing down. He had an image of one of those 'I dare you' type shows that kept coming up, a guy on the ground with a plank over his chest and abdomen that a bus was supposed to drive onto and stop just so the guy could, in Sam's humble opinion, prove how crazy he was. Still it was an apt parallel. That was the kind of weight he was feeling in his big brothers' chest.

_I'm going to have to call dad if he doesn't wake up soon… why? _asked that little voice of contention that always bristled when John's name was mentioned, _So he can tell me to leave again? So he can 'order' me to turn my back on Dean? All he's ever done is look out for me… all dad's ever done is drag us around and… oh just skip it…_he waved off that little angry voice, he was tired of having this argument with himself, exhausted by it and more than just a little bored by the constant cycle of accusation and recrimination. A stronger voice he hadn't known was in there finally, after twenty three years of moving and fighting and straining against this life, stood up and cleared its throat, _The only thing that matters right now is getting my brother back, if it's not geared toward that purpose, take it outside._

--

_Ouch!_ Laura thought weakly as her head bounced off the sidewalk and a split second later half a ton of marble landed straddling her torso. She cracked her eyes open while tasting blood in her mouth, and grimaced at the carefully sculpted face meant to scare off evil spirits, atop her.

"No way you live human… you murdered my mate…" her voice was like a dozen harpies shrieking all at once.

"Actually…" Laura started to protest then stopped and nodded, "…nevermind you're right… I did…" she admitted turning her head to the side in an effort to avoid the wicked stony fangs that were about to rip her throat out. _Just a little closer now…ha!_ she held back the grin as she plunged the steel spike into the female's body, just under the wing attachment and straight into her stony heart from behind.

It took several moments for the statue to crumble, leaving Laura half pinned by nearly a half ton of rubble but she wasn't going anywhere anyway. Slowly she swept away the debris and dragged herself out from under. Her whole body was one enormous ball of pain, bruised from head to toe with several cracks and fractures in between she lurched to the wall of the building fighting for breath, and spat a mouthful of blood onto the sidewalk.

Free of the debris she slid down the wall and sat with her knees in her chest. She had no concept of time as the last few nights of cat and mouse rolled through her memory, every move she made was analyzed, every aspect of the hunt scrutinized to see if she could have done better, saved one more life.

"You alright miss?" a soft thick voice asked from the darkness.

Laura cracked open her eyes, _I must look like complete hell, _she thought looking into the deep brown eyes before her. "I'll be fine thanks…" she nodded.

"You want I should call an ambulance 'r something? I saw that statue come down on you y'know… that musta hurt something awful…" he said.

She shook her head, "Nah thanks… Just help me up?" she asked extending her hand.

"Sure thing… if ya think ya should move at all…" he sort of asked.

Laura nodded wincing against the pain wondering if this skinny little black man would have the strength to haul her to her feet. She felt heavy, as if she were made of stone herself.

He was stronger than he looked however and hauled her easily to her feet, so easily in fact that she crashed into his chest and felt his arm come around her in a vise grip as he breathed into her ear, "Your boyfriend is broken bitch… your turn…"

--

tbc….

probably won't get to write till the weekend…

Please, sorry it's kinda lame…

sifi


	9. Chapter 9

Solitary Man – chpt 9

By sifi

By the time the sky lightened to gray, Dean found himself at a place called North Avenue Beach. His eyes, normally so vibrantly green were now gray to match the lake. _Twenty yards… I'd be in Lake Michigan… wonder how long I could just… float…_

"You can't do that Dean."

He hitched a breath and looked to the right, "Sam?" he sniffed feeling his eyes fill up again.

"Well yeah… and no, but you know that," he smiled softly.

"Yeah, I guess I do…" he breathed watching the waves break, suddenly, and for the first time in his life, frightened by what he might find in his little brothers' eyes. The fear, the hate, the loathing… he just couldn't. "What happened Sammy?" he asked hoping to make some sense of the evening's happenings.

"You're not alone Dean… I won't leave you… I promise,"

Dean looked to his right again knowing the spectre of his little brother would be gone when he did. He was right.

He huffed and returned his gaze to rolling whitecaps on the gray lake.

--

"Damn!" Sam barked wondering if his skull really was splitting in half, _Almost! I almost had him! _he slid off the chair, onto his knees. He was exhausted. For nearly seven hours he'd been trying to reach Dean without even a glimmer of success, then just as he thought he felt something, it was gone again.

"I'm here Dean," he sniffed resting his head on his shoulder and hoping by some miracle he was heard somewhere in his psyche, "You're not alone."

On the verge of crashing hard for his exertions, he barely moved when the cell phone broke the uncomfortable quiet of the room.

"Hello," he answered flatly.

"Sam? It's Laura… Where's Dean?"

He actually chuckled and felt pricks at the corners of his eyes as he wondered once more, where his brother was, what kind of world he was in, inside his own head.

"I really don't know…" he actually chuckled shakily.

"Sam!" she snapped sternly then moaned, "…talk to me…"

_Hey brainiac… she sounds like hell… like… hurt… pull it together! _his rational mind slapped his emotional one.

"He's right next to me… physically, I think he's fine…I think…" he answered shoving his fears aside.

"Is he hurt?" She was breathing hard now.

"That I really don't know… he's… I don't know… locked… in his head somewhere…"

"Tell me everything," she asked, her voice barely above a whisper.

Whatever had called her away from his brother, whatever hunt she'd been on had left her worse for the wear. _You're someone my brother cares about… you'd best be careful!_

Sam told her everything, beginning with the messages from Shep and his insistence on leaving Dean out of this one, all the way through losing the wiry man by the river. A few times, when he paused in his telling, she was so quiet he wasn't sure she was there anymore.

"Okay…" she said softly, "I'll see what I can find out and call you back… with any luck before tonight…Just… Sam? Stay with him… don't leave him… please…" her voice broke on the last word sending waves of gooseflesh through him. He knew she loved Dean but something in the weight of that single word made him wince.

"I'm not going anywhere," he assured knowing that if she said she'd call, she'd call. Whatever was wrong with her was most likely something she'd recover quickly from.

_Yeah… she'll be fine…hell I shoved a dagger through her throat and she bounced right back from that… what am I worried about? _he wondered. But he was worried.

--

Laura closed the cell and pushed herself to her feet, the brick wall her only stability. Her eyes slid over the unconscious body splayed precariously atop the pile of rubble that used to be the gargoyle female. His position made the world feel off kilter and turned her stomach. She quickly turned her head away feeling her visual track lag behind as she took as deep a breath as possible without causing a coughing fit or a deep cutting sting. Her eyes focused on the gold four door sedan two blocks away as she let go the security of the building.

Thankfully downtown Bentonville Arkansas was still wrapped in darkness and its residents by and large, still slumbering.

Laura's life, since she met the Winchesters had taken a turn she never could have anticipated despite her own unusual circumstances. In the end she knew it wouldn't matter that she'd bought the freedom of her brothers' soul with her own blood and indentured servitude, it didn't matter how many ways her body was to be broken; she wouldn't have traded any of it if doing so meant never having met the boys, never having met Dean. He'd become, in some ways, the moon of her life and though she'd told him frequently, and showed him at every appropriate opportunity that she loved him, if he'd ever verbalized a similar feeling she would've been terrified. It was enough she felt the things she did when they were together, he was sensitive… more than he let anyone else see anyway, and that told her all she needed to know. It was enough.

_Aw hell…_ she thought clutching at a streetlamp as she turned around and looked behind her to the unconscious possessed man, _That's just bloody freaking brilliant! the one way you have to find out… frikkin' stupid Laura!_ She'd gotten so accustomed to the limited resources she had when dealing with the evils in the world that she forgot about her one gift, the very method she'd used to learn the truth about the Winchester family.

She looked to the left and the sprawled possessed guy, then to the right and her car, a shining golden beacon of comfort. She was smack in the middle.

_Man…_she whined inside and whimpered but turned back anyway.

_What're you doing Laura? You aren't really considering dipping into a demon are you? Well yeah… I kinda need to know what it did to Dean…_she answered herself, _Hello McFly… what happens when you dip?_ she had a flash of a memory of Dean's head popping up through the mashed center of Metallicar's floor after she dipped into his mind and took a slice of his consciousness into her own mind.

Her belly flipped over, _Oh yeah… I forgot about that…You wanna go running around with a piece of Demon in you? You could do more harm than good!... it'll take a while for the piece to coalesce… I'd have enough time to call Sam, tell him how to help… Yeah, then beat down the door and kill them both… A slice of somebody else never changed my personality…Yeah but this is a DEMON! I have to take this chance, I'll do whatever it takes… it's Dean! Sheesh… hero complex much? I'll have a couple hours before it manifests… if need be…_

She lowered herself to her knees beside the demon-man and touched his temple with her forefinger, "Show me," she instructed softly.

Her breath stopped a moment and tears sprang to her eyes. In the span of a few heartbeats she saw everything it wove through Dean's consciousness. Every way it was going to beat down his defenses until nothing remained.

In Dean's mind he would be forever one step behind this demon, following a trail of corpses, each a person he cared about, and each murdered in increasingly brutal and horrific ways until the heart that gave the Winchester family the strength of its convictions, simply broke.

The ferocious cruelty of the demons full plan seemed to freeze her to the core. It wasn't enough the creature had woven these atrocities into the subdued consciousness but the knowledge that it also planned to carry out its evil in this plan as well stymied her. Its rationale was simple. Should the eldest child miraculously shake off his induced state and come up from what he thought was merely a nightmare, he would find himself not only mistaken, but horribly so. He would awaken to a carnival of death dedicated solely to him. There would be no escape from this nightmare in waking, there would be no escape from it by any living means if this demon had its way.

Having seen from its own sinister perspective what it intended to do, what lengths it was prepared to go to, Laura could barely fish her phone out of her pocket. The poison of this beings' life energy coursed through her. It was no more or less than a malicious fire that was quickly spreading, trying to melt her very nature and forge it as its own.

Her vision began to cloud as she stumbled back toward her car, fell to her knees and watched the cell skitter out of reach. She felt the asphalt in her hands and skittered after it. The fog over her vision began to brighten with the morning sky as sweat poured out and she reached the door handle.

_Just get into the car… just get inside…_she pushed and felt her body give a giant squeeze as blood and bile erupted onto the street before her. _Okay… that's bad…_a small and far too human voice within her pointed out but the best part of her replied simply, resignedly, and most important, willingly, _Doesn't matter… rest later… just get in the car and make the call…_ Laura would never figure out how it happened but the car door closed and she found herself inside, pressing the phone to the steering wheel with one hand while she forced enough focus on the screen to highlight Dean's cell number and press send.

--

"Laura?" Sam answered, his voice thick with fatigue.

"Wake him up… doesn't matter how… wake him up before they all die…" she breathed.

Sam felt his blood run cold, her voice was not her own, behind the words, only emptiness existed _It's not her… it can't be her… her voice doesn't sound like that…_he thought wondering if this was all part of the demon bastards' sick game.

"How?" he asked then amended, "How do I know you're you?"

She whimpered something unintelligible on her end of the line and Sam closed his eyes, focused and envisioned himself reaching out to her, to feel the woman he knew and hope to discern the difference between her and some possible pretender.

"Okay…. I love him… Sam… feel it… I love him…" she forced through the airwaves and gasped quietly in the background as he felt himself wrapped in a feeling some deep visceral part of him recognized.

"Okay… how do I wake him?" he nodded swallowing hard and remembering somewhere, some…when, when he'd felt love like that.

She cried out on her end and he heard the unmistakable sound of not-so-dry heaving. "God… please…" she gasped in the background.

_Oh man… this is bad… I knew she was hurt… why isn't she recovering? Why isn't she better already? She's a freakin' emissary of a deity! She's a hunter in her own right! Please… whatever might be out there…just… please…_ "Laura… where are you? You sound…"

"Nothing else matters…just…" '_Dean_' she thought, "…Please Sam… please… wake him…"

Sam barely heard the last. If he hadn't had the majority of his being focused on her fading voice he might not have heard it at all. _If anything happens to you it'll kill him, I don't know if he's said it, I don't know if he even knows it… but God help me if I don't do this… I'd rather face your wrath than his for not doing anything, not when I could have... _He thought as he closed his eyes and gasped a breath before dialing a number he knew all too well.

--

_I have to get there… I have to be there for him… I have to…I have to find a way to wake him up before this happens, before this nightmare becomes a reality… It doesn't matter Laura, come on!_ she looked across the street, to the pile of marble chunks and debris and closed her eyes sighing as she leaned back for a moment before another wave of evil induced nausea rushed through her. _He's gone… you let him go… he's going to go back and watch Dean lose it… he's going to go back and finish the job… make sure it's done right… He's thorough, I'll give him that… _she slid the key into the ignition slot, turned it longer than necessary but her faithful Hunny turned over and held even as her hand slid from the ignition and consciousness slipped away.

--

tbc… you know what I need… sorry so… meh…

sifi


	10. Chapter 10

Solitary Man – chpt 10

By: sifi

"…it didn't matter!... He was already down when I found him! All your planning, your… bullshit! and it didn't change anything… just do what I'm asking you to do and get that APB put out…unless you want to lose another ally…" Sam yelled cruelly, no longer caring how sharp or dull his words were when they cut John, "…what am I going to be doing? I'm going to be trying to reach your son before something worse happens to him… call me when you find out anything…" he ordered and hung up before John could respond.

He tried again to call Laura and as with the last half dozen calls, there was no answer. Between repeat dialing her number and John's to try and get some help he felt like he was stuck in some kind of loop. _Well at least I finally got through to dad… Come on Dean…she said I had to wake you up…what the hell does she think I've been trying to do for the last… what nine hours now? Maybe I should take him to a hospital after all, what would they do? I don't know I'm not a freakin' doctor… they'd probably just hook him up to a bunch of machines and stuff… do blood tests, look for chemicals… another CAT scan or something make sure his brain's still in his head… I don't know…_he thought desperately and sat on the edge of the bed pulling Dean's inert body into a seated position and holding him, "Come on Dean, you gotta help me out here…give me some way to reach you… give me a sign or something… I swear I won't give you a hard time about sleeping in anymore… just… you need to wake up…Laura told me…" his voice buckled as his brain wrapped around the beginnings of an idea, "…She's in trouble Dean… something bad, she's hurt and lost and she needs you to find her… if there's any part of you that can hear me at all… focus on finding Laura…"_ Maybe if he has a focal point he'll be able to contact her? No one ever said she was psychic…at least not over a distance, well maybe I'll be able to contact him more easily…there has to be something, some kind of way to touch his mind, please…_he hoped lowering him back down and steadying himself for another try.

--

Dean shambled down the hall toward his room, he felt like a blind man yet somehow with sight. His vision existed in the current or in the past, without his brother at his side, he could see no future. He knew he should continue his quest for the demon that was so hell bent on tormenting him, whoever, whichever it was… there were people out there that needed protecting from this thing, that needed to be warned and no matter how much he may want to lay down and will this all away he knew he couldn't. There was a war to be fought and won and he began to understand how for his father and his brother, this quest had become so personal.

He opened the door and stepped into the room barely registering that the light was on. He met his fathers' brown liquid eyes, so rife with crushing sadness and bewilderment and nearly choked as the two men came together, clinging to the only other person who could feel the depth of their pain.

"Dad… I… I'm sorry…" Dean choked a whisper out and felt himself cut a sob, or was that his dad? He couldn't tell.

Neither man knew how long he clung to the other seeking something neither of them could find. In time they came apart and John looked his eldest up and down, _He looks like hell… he should…_he thought.

"What happened?" he asked.

Dean shook his head, _That's what I've been trying to figure out…_ "He just… it was like a reaper took him… it was… one minute we were settling down to figure out… then he just… he seized… it was like…there was nothing I could've done… if I could've seen it, I would have… but…" he tried to explain but the words just refused to come out in any semblance of order or cohesion. Oddly enough he could see that his father was following him. "Dad… he said you guys were trying to protect me from something, do you know what… or who…started this? And more importantly… do you know how to find it and kill it?" he asked.

John hung his head.

"Dad?" Dean asked. His belly was quivering, this was so surreal, none of it could be true and yet here it was. Just on a lark, while his dad's eyes were lowered he grabbed a bit of skin on his forearm and pinched as hard as he could. _Yep, that hurts, I guess I'm awake after all… God what a freakin' nightmare…_he thought.

"We were trying to figure that out, we were trying to… well you saw the bodies, 987 DW, what's the number mean?" John asked looking into Dean's flotsam eyes.

Dean shook his head, "It's just something to get my attention… it got my attention…" he muttered weakly.

"Dean, this isn't the time to hide things from me... if there's anything we could find out, any kind of hint or clue as to where or…"

"There isn't!" Dean shouted quickly while his heart trip-hammered so hard he could see his pulse within his eyes.

John turned his head to the side, examining his son's features as they contorted in pain then were quickly paved over in stony blankness.

Dean huffed out his breath and steeled himself, _I hate this…_ "The last case Sam and I were working, Carol Guinardi…the spirit that tortured and killed her…"

"Yeah, the serial killer who became a demon and tried to raise that other serial killer… Beyers… Aaron Beyers right...?" John asked.

Dean nodded, _just stick to the basic facts… it's not really a lie… it's just… omission… God I'm starting to sound like Sammy…_ "When they found his body… Aaron Beyers' I mean… they found 987 pictures of his victims tacked to the wall of the room he brought them to at first…he wasn't just a serial killer, he was a serial killer of children, and a pedophile… that's why the number... but what I don't understand is… We torched Aaron… we used the bullets on Eddy Jay and they worked dad! He fell into the grave and burned with Aaron Beyer's remains… so whoever or whatever is behind this… it used that information to attract my attention…"

"So it would seem," John nodded and shrugged out his coat and rose placing a warm hand onto his son's shoulder, "We'll figure this out Dean, we owe it to Sam…"

Dean nodded, his eyes glued to the floor with more emotions than he knew how to handle as his dad closed the door to the bathroom and a scant second later, just before he turned on the water to cover the noise, a tight sob echoed in the small tile room.

"…_she needs your help Dean…she's in trouble…and hurt…"_ he heard Sam's voice in his head and wondered for a split second if he'd finally cracked or if somehow his baby brother was going to help him put an end to this particular evil. _Who Sam? Who's in trouble?_ He thought trying to feel something as the scent of Midwestern autumn filled the back of his nose and the hairs on his arms stood at attention. He'd never forget the feeling of their first kiss hot on the heels of her voice telling him, so open and unassuming, asking nothing in return; that she loved him.

_Laura…_he thought and dialed her number from memory.

--

Sweat ran down Sam's face as his eyes opened and he felt his mouth curl with a tiny pinprick of hope. _I felt him think her name…I did it…now if I can just do it again…_he thought. There was no question about it, he'd touched his brothers' mind and he was turning varying shades of green to prove it but despite the nausea and the fact that he was sitting in a veritable puddle of sweat for his efforts, he was charged. Exhausted and verging on a migraine of epic proportions, but charged.

--

"…how long damn you!" John hollered clenching his fist until his nails began to tear through the skin of his hand.

_Man this is just waaaaay to freakin' familiar… Can I just go back and start this life over again please? Man…I hate this stuff…_ Bobby thought while one of his best friends tried with all his might not to punch another of their best friends into oblivion.

The demon behind Shep's eyes smiled, "Not the point Johnny boy… in fact not even important…" it looked up at the Seal of Solomon on the ceiling and shook Shep's head. "That's a really good idea… great trap… too bad it's not gonna help your boys… We're gonna tear out Dean's heart right in front of your baby… he's such a sensitive soul your little Sammy… heh… yeah, sensitive… funny how a little loss can go such a long way," he sneered.

John rocketed his fist into Shep's face knocking both him and the chair over within the borders of the seal, "…answer the question… how long have you been inside him?"

The demon chuckled and flicked its tongue out, tasting the blood on its host's face, "Just long enough to convince you to separate your boys… 'keep his guard up… emotional turmoil John… it'll help keep those defenses fortified until we can figure this out…' he mocked then broke into cold laughter.

"You know we can't believe anything it says…" Bobby said softly to his friend.

"My Sons are under attack!" John hissed, "It's the oldest strategy in the book, wear down the defenses, move in for the kill… come on! We were played!"

"I know," Bobby bowed his head, "I know we were…"

"Speak up fellas huh? give a guy a chance to hear what's going on?" the demon taunted.

"…and she didn't answer?" Bobby asked.

"No… do you think she'd really be able to do anything?" John asked.

"Aahhh the bitch…" the demon sneered from his place on the floor, "Yeah… if she's not dead by now she will be soon… kinda hard to keep on keepin' on when you got a silver spike sticking through you…on a positive note I think I missed her heart… wouldn't want her exit to be too easy now would we? Nah… let it break or… huh yeah… better yet… y'remember that old song? How's it go now?... oh yeah… You Only Hurt the Ones you Love…ha… yeah, that's a great old song…" it taunted.

"Bobby get on the phone to Sam and tell him to be on the lookout… just in case this son of a bitch is telling the truth…" John instructed firmly.

"Which truth?" Bobby asked thoroughly stunned by everything that had happened since Shep arrived that morning. He couldn't help but wonder if the demon had come just so it could watch John twist in agony over what had happened to Dean, or fret about what might happen to Sam or even beat his head against the wall in frustration. Either way it didn't matter. They'd discovered the thing inside their friend solely by accident. Bobby wasn't even supposed to have been there. John was doing research at the kitchen table and Bobby had an appointment for an estimate on a repair job. He'd been halfway to the salvage yard when the client called and told him to forget it, he'd done some basic math and decided to strip the car and sell off its parts. So he'd turned around and returned home, ready to help.

He came up the back steps into the kitchen, followed the two familiar voices out into the living room and seen just before it blinked, the black within black eyes for a split second before it seemed to focus hard on John, as if it was trying to reach him telepathically or something. It all happened so fast, John clutched his head as blood poured from his nose and Bobby leaped into action, simply shoving Shep's body a few feet until it was bound within the Seal the boys had used on the demon inhabited woman Meg.

"Pick one," John turned on his heel and began to stride clockwise around the perimeter of the seal chanting a familiar Latin incantation.

--

In the bathroom the toilet flushed, the water ran and was shut off but the door did not open. Dean waited for it, waited to hear the knob turn, for the latch to click, but it didn't. He was already on his feet when a violent low pitched tumble knocked the walls and tore something down.

"Dad!" he called turning the knob and pushing the door in, it stuck and he looked down, "No… no Dad! No!" _This can't be happening! God Dad! What's happening! _he screamed inside while shoving hard enough to enter the room where John Winchester's body lay on the tile, blood running from his nose and mouth while his eyes grasped with almost tangible force, at Dean's. His lips worked silently save for the hiss of air through the blood that was filling his mouth.

"Dad! What happened?" Dean asked rolling John onto his side toward him with one hand while the other dug his cell out of his pocket again and dialed 911. He felt John's lungs work to bring oxygen into his body as the blood flowed onto the floor, seeping through the heavy material of his jeans and pooling under his knees. _Oh God there's so much of it… this can't be happening!_ he cried feeling what was left of his little world starting to crack.

He gave his location to the emergency operator who told him to keep his dad on his side to prevent him from drowning on his own blood, _"But You don't understand! There's so much of it… it's all over the floor… he's not gonna have any left!"_ he'd protested desperately but she'd assured him blood had a way of looking like more than was actually spilled. _Condescending bitch! _he thought ending the call and meeting his dad's eyes, "Dad… was it a reaper?" he asked and read the silent working of John's lips along with his tiny head shake.

"Did you see it? Was it visible? Was it corporeal?" he asked thinking instantly of Sam and that time with the Wendigo.

Again John indicated 'no' and Dean started to grasp the terrible truth. John didn't know what happened, he didn't know why he was laying in his sons arms dying, and Dean was going to be left alone.

_Somebody wake me up or kill me now! One way or the other… this can't freaking be happening… I can't lose them both… not… like this, not to some unknown… thing… please take me too…you want me! Take me! _and a tiny little boy's voice in the back of his head whispered tearfully, _Don't leave me alone…_

--

tbc

What cha think so far?

Opine please… too much, too little, too boring?

help me out please.

thanks

sifi


	11. Chapter 11

Solitary Man – chpt 11

By: sifi

--

"_C'mon now Dean… where's that focus? Think about Laura… she's in danger, she needs help…"_ even his thoughts were slurred. Sam was clinging to consciousness by the barest of threads. He'd found Dean unconscious in his motel room fifteen hours, that felt like days ago, and it seemed to Sam that in that time, half of his world had fallen apart. His brother was unresponsive and locked inside his own head, in some kind of nightmare that barely allowed him a grunt. He could feel the crushing torment rolling off of Dean in waves that seemed to ebb and flow like oceanic tides and try as he might, he'd only been able to reach him once. He'd known when he'd broken through because he'd heard Dean think her name, and he'd felt, as if it were his own, Dean's heart beat just a little faster. He hadn't been able to maintain the connection though, and now he was afraid he wouldn't be able to do it again at all if he didn't keep trying. But he was so damned fatigued, he wondered if he could do any good at all if he couldn't focus himself.

Not only had he been at his brothers side since he lost the wiry man, but now insult had been added to injury. _Shep was possessed… I thought he had wards…how the hell did it get through? What if nothing we do…no, that's not possible, if it was… we never would have lasted this long…_ he looked at Dean, his skin was slackening and his incoming beard just made it look worse. _There isn't much more time before I have no choice but to take him to a hospital, he's going to need fluids at the very least… three days without water can kill and he's been sweating like crazy on and off…must be when it gets bad, whatever he's going through… why put him through it? Why not me? I'm the one who's supposed to be psychic… yeah, that's a freakin' joke… _Sam hadn't realized it but as he tried to figure out what he could do differently, what tactic he could use to bring his brother back if Laura wasn't available to help, his body had passed out while his mind continued to work.

--

The first thing she felt was the heat and her lungs straining for air that didn't burn. The next thing she felt was pain, pure and simple. There wasn't an area of her body that didn't hurt, from her head where it had impacted any number of stony objects over the last few days, to her feet. She tried to shift her position and felt something pull from the back to the front. _Oh yeah… that's right…heh, forgot about that_, she tried not to chuckle as she looked down to find the wide end of her silver spike sticking out of her abdomen. _Oh yeah… let's not take that out of there…could be the only reason I'm still alive…Dean I'm sorry…oh…I need to tell Sam…_she had a vision of her finger moving the highlight down to Dean's number and pressing send, then wondered what she'd said.

Slowly she came to realize that the car was running. _Had a half a tank..._she looked at the gas gauge, _okay, over a quarter…this is good, ish…Dean… I'm sorry, I'd give anything to help you…_she thought about trying to become the Raven, shifting her molecular structure but in her present state, without the aid of the contained magiks surrounding Bobby's house to help her focus the energy, she might very well wind up a mound of gelatinous goo. _Too bad… it'd be nice to fly again…okay then driving it is…_

"Yeah bitch, get us there so we can finish off that human roadblock," an image of the demon, inside the wiry man materialized in the passenger seat and bounced gleefully, "Come on… let's go… let's go leave the baby ripe for the pickin's…"

She closed her eyes and sighed, _Oh yeah… forgot about that too…wow… right now it really sucks to be me…sucks to be Dean too… Okay girl, you got one choice and one choice only, you have to get to him…if Sam can't do it you have to try…_

"Yeah that's it polly pocket you go get yourself over to your broke ass boyfriend, give me a chance to get back to his head, make sure my handiwork's still working handi…"

"Why do you have to talk like that man? You sound like some Huggy Bear wannabe from the seventies…" the mind of the man the demon had inhabited snapped taking Laura by complete surprise.

"Oh…so very very bad…" she groaned throwing open the driver door in just enough time to turn her head and spew out into the street, adding a fresh smattering of red to the dried rust colored blood she'd hurled before.

"Aahahowch…" she whimpered sitting back, feeling the point of the spike stick into the upholstery of the seat and drag on her innards. Tears slid from her eyes as she reached back with her left hand and grasped the protruding point, trying to collapse it back a bit, not enough to leave her bleeding but enough so that it wouldn't continue to stick in the seat, but to her surprise she was lacking the strength. "Please… please…" she moaned and pressed her palm to the point unsure whether the coupling inside the device would give first or her flesh.

"Ooh self mutilation… baby you know you and me we could have some gooood times…" the demon slice grinned.

"Don't you listen to that sweetheart you just do what you have to so you can save that boy… he needs you…"

"Candy ass… lemme guess you'd just love to have that white boy be your cream filling…" the demon scowled and made gagging motions.

"Shut up… just shut up…" she grunted feeling the point slide into the palm of her hand as finally the coupling inside that kept the joints locked in place gave way and she was able to collapse the first few segments.

"Nice… you kiss your mother with that mouth?" the human sneered at the demon then he turned to Laura, "See what I've had to deal with since this son of a bitch took me over? filthy rotten evil bastard… he got one sick mind too… I wish I could help you miss…"

"T'sokay…" she breathed leaning back with her eyes closed. Her hands were gloved in her own blood as she placed them on the steering wheel while quakes of shock could be felt through the car.

Movement in the rear view mirror caught her attention and coerced her body into squeezing a jet of adrenaline into her bloodstream. There was a pedestrian coming toward her, looking into the car with an expression that resembled concern.

"Better get outta here sweetheart 'er you're gonna wind up in a hospital… if that happens, what's gonna happen to that boy of yours huh… his little brother isn't strong enough to pull him home alone and you know it… you gotta get to him so you can get this bastard dead…" the human encouraged while jerking his thumb at the demon who sat mocking him soundlessly almost like a sibling would do.

Laura stepped on the brake, put the car in gear and pulled slowly away from the curb.

--

Several members of the medical staff at Cook County Hospital recognized Dean when he accompanied the EMT's into the ER. Yesterday, at least he thought it was yesterday but he really wasn't sure, came flooding back and despite the fact that they'd brought Sam to a different room, his imagination was a powerful antithesis, overlaying the image of his brothers dead body, blue and gray and purple splotched with that hideous travesty scrawled into the skin he'd known when it was still pristine.

His mind flashed back to Sam as a child, something about bathing him in tomato sauce, brown sugar and baking soda after the skunking thing… to his credit Sam had indulged in one hellacious smack down before falling to his empathy and crying for Dean. _God am I sick of crying already… I have got to find a way stop this… I have to get pro-active on this sonuvabitch before more people die! _a flash caught his eye, he could've sworn it was silver and somehow fluid, and it sang. It reminded him of something but he couldn't quite figure out what. He turned his head to try and get a glimpse of it but it was no use. The flash was gone, but he had an idea starting to germinate in his head.

He hoped and prayed as he watched the medical team do what they'd been so well trained to do. _They didn't have to defibrillate him… they didn't ask how long he'd been dead… there's hope, as long as I'm looking at those little spikes and they're still working, there's hope…_

"He's crashing!" one of the doctors called as Dean's heart lurched in his chest.

_No…No he can't crash! That's my dad! He's all that's left! You have to save him! _his inner voice howled disbelieving and he wondered why he couldn't have gone to college like Sam, why he didn't know more than the doctors, why he couldn't save the people he loved. _Who's next? Please don't let him die, you can't take my dad from me… you already got my brother you bastard! You can't have him!_

He looked at the clock as one of them said softly, "Call it…" then he could hear nothing besides the screams of denial and howls of vengeful rage in his own head and heart.

He could feel his head shaking 'no', his heart breaking in his chest and chips of his world falling out of place having lost cohesion with those two words. His knees felt loose and he felt himself backpedal, he felt an arm behind and around him, trying to lead him to a chair, fully aware of his state and what he'd lost less than twenty four hours ago.

_Don't touch me! Don't touch me you'll wind up dead… don't make me look at you… don't make me see you as a person… leave me alone…_he protested inside his head and turned out of the grip of well meaning person beside him only to find himself running smack into a yellow painted cinderblock wall. He felt his forehead bounce off the block but it didn't matter. He was still rocking his head back and forth in denial as his back came flush to the wall and he slid down with his knees to his chest, surrounded by alien accoutrements, many of which had been used on him at one time or another, not that it made any difference. He couldn't begin to fathom their uses, their purpose, and he couldn't begin to fathom his own any longer without his father and brother. _This can't be happening… seriously, it can't be… no power, no God no Intelligent Universe would allow this to happen to one person… Oh yeah? What about Job? _a cynical voice from inside asked. He knew biblical myth, he and Sam had grown up well versed in many different belief systems thanks to Pastor Jim and Caleb in particular, _They're dead, both of them… that's how Big Bad started before… he sent Meg to kill Jim and Caleb and anyone else who's ever helped us… our friends… they wanted Sammy… why would they let him be killed… unless… _an unthinkable possibility came prancing through his imagination wearing leg warmers and black tights, _Well there's something you don't see every day… anymore… Thank God… what was I saying? Oh yeah…_ _There's a tie right there… Eddy Jay transcended… he became a demon, but he was dead first… he wanted to become a demon true but… what if they can pervert someone who didn't want to be one? What if they have a way of not just infiltrating or possessing Sammy… what if they decided that route was too risky, that we could get to him and free him…so they decided to kill him and make him… oh man.. oh no… that would explain why they'd kill dad too… am I next? Are they going to find some invisible way to kill me horribly too before I can save either of their souls? No… no f-ing way they win… no matter if it's the last thing I do… they can kill me if they want but so help me God I'm am going to take each and every one of them with me that I can! This I swear! _he gave his oath despite his trembling and tearful outer countenance. Once again he saw a flash to his right, that same silvery white light at the periphery of his vision that made him turn his head and look for it. He didn't know if it was real, he had no clue what it could possibly be but he was starting to look for it now.

The first time he'd noticed it was in the pit Eddy Jay's spirit had kept them captive in, he'd gotten angry about something, he wasn't sure but he thought it might have been while Eddy's spirit was whipping Sam, ripping his skin from his bones while breaking them with a chain… at first he'd thought he was hallucinating but he was aware of it now, and whatever it was, this gleam of silvery light that he felt sing when he saw it was slowly becoming a comfort.

--

Laura's eyes opened and tracked the sound that reminded her of a voice. Her head moved left. She saw her reflection and startled, a horrified expression meeting her gaze that literally mirrored the one she felt on her face.

'clack, clack, clack…' rapped on the window. It was a hand with a ring on it.

Without conscious thought or intent her finger pushed the button that would lower the window as a voice to her right suggested happily, "Kill him and I'll give you his life force, believe me bitch you could use it…You're not gonna make it to the boys… and I was always a sucker for a reunion show…hey two words for you… 'Growing Pains' ahhh ahh, yeah see…"

"Miss are you alright?" the state trooper asked removing his mirrored sunglasses, his expression one of true concern as he looked into the car and saw a woman bathed in her own blood with a shaft of metal protruding from her abdomen, "Holy shit…" he breathed.

Laura gasped and met his eyes, "Nothing holy about it...You will log this stop as a warning… you will forget what you've seen… this is completely routine…"

He met her bloodshot eyes and she watched him swallow hard before he nodded, "Okay… you drive safely now…"

She nodded, "Yessir…" she croaked and started to pull out of the runoff ditch she'd apparently wound up in, her gas gauge nearing the emergency zone. She pressed the brake and threw the car into park, "Sir…" she called and choked on the pain that tore through her with the ferocity of Zeus in a snit.

"Yes ma'am?" he asked smiling and returning to her window.

"You carry an extra gallon of gas?" she asked.

He literally tipped his hat, "Two point five ma'am," he nodded smiling happily.

"I'm on emergency officer… I need what you've got…" she pushed and smiled as he nodded congenially.

"Of course ma'am…"

Laura threw open the door and breathed as deeply as possible.

"What the hell do you think you're doing woman? We need to get to cracker boy… oreo filling… whichever you prefer… you need a piece of that boy… let the cop do the deed…" the demon urged from, the passenger seat and Laura actually had the presence of mind to wish she could influence others to see the world she and few others, those like the boys she loved like family knew existed.

_Why leave it to someone else to do what you can do?_ she heard the voice of the woman who'd cared for her body in this life. She was a self-sufficient woman who'd reminded Laura that her greatest strength lay within her heart. It was a philosophy she tried to pass on whenever opportunity arose. She smiled standing at the tank flap, a glint of sunshine reflecting off the fat end of the spike sticking out of her abdomen, _Please… Cernnunos, whatever powers that be… help him find that light within himself… help him flick off the corrosion of pain to find that gleaming essence inside… no matter what happens to me, I don't care… if it helps… if it's for him… take me now… take my life, give him whatever's left that I have…He is mine… he doesn't know it, like Sam doesn't know it… but he belongs to me… give him anything and everything… I give it willingly._ She thought and heard a voice in her head, "You gave your everything to me…" There was no accusation, just a reminder, and she nodded.

"Aye… I did. When you're done with me Cernunnos, anything that's left… belongs to him… no matter how little it may be… see to it…" she said as the State trooper handed her the gas can, his eyes fixed on the spike hilt sticking out of her belly.

"Uh… you want me to get that?" he asked.

She shook her head, "Never ask someone to do what you're not willing to do yourself," she said softly and smiled, wincing and grimacing and choking on every muscular contraction that made her want to scream and brought her blood to a boil within her.

Her mind clouded red with pain as she poured the gas into her tank and handed the can back to the cop, never in her life had she wanted so desperately to wrap her hands around someone's throat and choke the life out of them.

--

tbc

please.

Sifi.


	12. Chapter 12

Solitary Man – chpt 12

By: sifi

--

Sam looked around curious about his surroundings. The last thing he remembered was being in Dean's motel room with his brother unconscious. Slowly the yellow walls surrounding him became filled with shelves and devices that should've been foreign to him, but thanks to everything his family had been through, weren't. _I'm in a hospital…_he thought as a gasping breath and sniff caught his attention. He wheeled around and felt his eyes grow wide.

"Dean! Dean oh man am I glad to see you awake!" he bolted to his brother who sat against the wall with his knees in his chest and his head shaking back and forth, his eyes red and tear filled.

"Dean!" he barked crouching in front of him. He reached out and tried to touch his shoulder but his hand passed through him, the same way it had when he'd had the vision of him as a teenager burning those polaroids. "Damnit!" _It's a dream… man… okay is it mine or is it his? Could be either or neither… man my head hurts… well, there's no choice, if it's even a remote possibility that I could be in his head, in his dream… I have to try and reach him any way I can…_

"Dean…" he leaned in to his ear, "Listen to me Dean… this is just a nightmare… all of this… none of this is happening… Dad exorcised the demon…" _If it's dead or exorcised shouldn't the effects of what it did have worn off?_ he shrugged internally, "Dean please hear me… you have to wake up… don't make me take you to a hospital… they'll catheterize you y'know…" he tried knowing how much Dean hated those things. "What are you seeing Dean? Am I seeing what you're seeing?" he asked straightening up and pacing as a nurse came in and dabbed at the cut on his older brothers forehead then put a couple butterflies on it.

She wrapped her hands around his arm and coaxed him into standing. Sam looked at her and thought she was familiar. She had reddish brown hair, cut short and bright brown eyes, _She looks like Laura, only not…_ he realized and felt a smile touch his lips, _This must be Dean's head…it makes sense, she was his nurse when they met, she loves him, he loves her… even if he won't admit it… dumbass…okay… now all I have to do is find a way to get through to him…oooh_ he felt a stroke of inspiration as he remembered an episode of one of Jess's favorite shows, some chick got body-jacked and she superimposed her psychic self over one of her friends to try and get a message out. Sam, having been lost in thought quickly dodged out into the hallway and followed them to where the nurse put Dean into a chair and squeezed his shoulder before leaving him.

Sam jogged up to his brother and sat down next to him, "Dean if you ever make a crack about this man… so help me…" he warned and scooted himself to the left passing into his brothers' form until they were completely superimposed.

_Wow this is weird…in his head**… inside** his head…_he thought. Sam could sense densely woven layers of his brother's personality and mental processes. It was like wading through a latticework of molecules, unable to see quite what the end product would be or how it would end up that way but knowing it was contributing to it just the same. Images of moments passed by his perception, like frames of film cut apart from the main strip, most of them moved too quickly for him to see clearly but there were those that seemed to meander and given the content he could see of them, these were images that gave his brother comfort. He saw their dad smiling as he taught them how to shoot as children. He saw himself holding out a hand drawn birthday card to his ten year old big brother, and he felt a wave of warmth pass over him as the image meandered by. He saw Mary pushing Dean on a swing at some long ago park, Dean sitting in dad's lap behind the wheel of the Impala as they went on an imaginary drive through the country without ever leaving the driveway.

_This is so private…_he thought wondering if he'd remember any of this when he woke up. Or if Dean would ever know he'd been in there. _It's like reading a diary…_Sam was disturbed by the intrusion but he also knew he didn't have much of a choice if he was going to get his brother back.

He cocked his head to the side as something yellow seemed to flicker in the distance. Slowly, not really meaning to Sam reached out his 'hand' grasping the image gently between two fingers and looked at it. His heart tripped and he felt his blood chill. The image was really a series of images, like the photo album loop he had on his laptop. Oily yellow eyes staring out from John's face, that sneer… the eyes again but this time the image haloed by rock walls instead of the cabin… a trigger finger wrenched and dislocated as a gun was somehow torn from the young hand holding it… the demon within John pulling eight or nine year old Sam out of a dog kennel by the hair and dragging him toward a gore encased makeshift altar…Aaron Mitchell Beyers gazing out at him, his lower face painted orange by smeared lipstick… photographs of children, rows and columns of photographs of children in obscene poses who's nature was in complete contradiction to the tearful and terrified expressions on their faces… Aaron Mitchell Beyers gazing at a thirteen year old boy as his life drained away on the floor…

Sam felt his belly flutter and his breath come short as his fingers parted and the square of scrolling images zipped away, back on its normal course. _I knew you killed him but knowing it and seeing it are two different things…Oh man… Dean… why didn't you ever tell anyone?_ but he knew the answer. It was already done and telling anyone wouldn't change anything, it wouldn't help those sixty one children, _Sixty two,_ he corrected himself. That his big brother hadn't fallen prey to the man wasn't the point, he'd still been victimized and that was something Dean would never want anyone to know.

_I feel filthy… I gotta get outta…_ his heart was pounding for the anxiety that seemed to be coursing through him. He'd been fine until that series of… horrors… _How much of that is actual memory?_ he wondered finding an odd measure of solace in the idea that some of it might have been, perhaps a product of fevered delusion. After all, he'd never been caged by their dad as a child and he'd never known of John being possessed until earlier that year. _Sure… Dean was sick then too wasn't he? He was down for a couple days after dad and I woke up…man it's so…fuzzy…I guess it doesn't matter… except that I know for a fact dad dropped him into a vortex, and I know for a fact he found his own way for a hundred and fifty miles back to us… and I know for a fact he was nearly… nearly…yeah, that's facts._ He shook his head unable to think about what might have happened if Dean had been any other child. _I still feel filthy…_

He turned around, wondering which way was out when his eye caught sight of another image, the one from the box of pictures Jenny returned to them, the one that had all four of them in it, happy and at peace as a family. He felt his eyes mist and he swallowed hard as a few more family 'pictures' glided by then he noticed the women. He huffed, smiling and shaking his head thinking he might've just strolled into an entire 'store' devoted to sexual misadventures but he was wrong. There were only three woman in these particular fluttering images, all of whom he knew. Mercy, Bobby's niece; _Dean's first time if I'm not mistaken; Cassie, who he let himself love before she broke his heart; and yep, if I'm not mistaken…_ but the last image seemed held apart from the others and he tried to move toward it, to see it more clearly, confirm what he knew but for every step he took toward it, it remained the same distance away. _Held at arms length? _he wondered, _Why?..._ then he saw the image of Cassie again and knew why, _don't you understand Dean? She's your equal in every way that counts…she'd never hurt you…_ he thought and sighed.

"Sam?" he heard and turned to find himself sitting next to Dean in the hospital corridor again. _Wow! that was… ungh…I feel sick…_ he moaned.

"Dean? Was that you?" he asked wondering if a psychic self could barf.

"Sam… come on buddy…"

He knew then, there was somebody in the motel room with them, _No! No don't wake me up yet! I have to reach Dean!...No! _he protested both in his head and, well, technically in Dean's head.

"Dean! Please… hear me… this isn't real! None of this is real! I'm here… I think dad is too…either that or I'm going insane but that's not important… I'm here and I'm not leaving you I swear..." he felt himself slipping through the realm of his brothers' nightmares, almost like flying but without altitude. He grinned as for a split second he saw Dean turn his head toward where he'd been, his expression curious and open as he mouthed, "Sam?"

--

"No!... Damnit!" he cursed breathing hard and looking into John's fearful eyes. "I almost had him dad!... He looked at me and said my name…" he gasped allowing his father to help him up off the floor, his body protesting the movement in general, "…how long have I been out?" he asked moving slowly to unkink himself.

"I haven't been able to get hold of you for about six hours…" John scrubbed his face with one hand while the other touched Sam's face gently, his relief obvious until his eyes fell onto his oldest boy and they began to mist.

"Dean…" he whispered and sat on the edge of the bed and ran his hand over Dean's head, "Come on dude… come back to us…"

"Dad, I almost had him, I have to try again…" Sam croaked and chugged hard on a half full bottle of water.

"I exorcised the demon… why isn't he coming out of this?" John asked.

"I don't know…" Sam shook his head, "I wish to hell I did…"

"What about your friend Laura? Any word from her?" John asked.

Sam picked up and checked his phone, "Nothing… did you get the APB put out on her?" he asked.

"Yeah… what makes you think she can help anyway…? Even Missouri can't help…" John shook his head.

Sam had never seen his father looking defeated before and he found he didn't much like the way it made him feel.

"You called her?" he asked, John nodded. "Did she say anything?"

He nodded, "She said she's not a magician… that if the people who love him can't wake him up then he's going to have to get out of it himself,"

"That's it?" Sam snarled.

John nodded.

"Well we're not sunk yet, not unless something happened to Laura…with the magiks she knows, the whole being an emissary thing… there's got to be something she can do, some way she can help… and we both know she loves him…"

On the bed Dean's head rolled to the side and they heard, "Laura…" slide from his lips as a faint smile tugged at the corners of them.

--

"Hey handsome… need a lift?" she asked pulling to the curb and opening the passenger door for him. He slid into the seat and clasped the belt around himself.

"Dean… look at me…" she instructed and pulled the car into a spot about a block ahead of where she'd picked him up. He did and felt tears spill yet again.

"Dean do you trust me?" she asked turning in her seat to face him.

"Course I do…" he nodded lethargically.

"Do you believe I love you?"

He nodded.

"That I'd never hurt you?" she asked.

"Yeah of course I know all that Laura… what're you getting at?" he asked feeling his heartbeat accelerate as a "spider walking on your arm" feeling ran amok over the whole of his body.

"There's part of a demon in your mind… it was in a telepath… it used the telepath to implant this… this hell into you… this nightmare you've been living Really IS a nightmare…" she explained.

Dean shook his head and for a brief second his hope flashed in his eyes, unguarded.

"Bitch!" came a snarl from the back seat as a black arm wrapped around her neck from behind, the other hand holding a gleaming blade it moved to strike across her neck, "Don't you listen to this bitch cracker boy… she's just trying to keep your spirits up! She knows as well as you do your boys are dead…"

"No they're NOT!" she growled fiercely and grabbed the knife hand, pinching it in just the right place to make him drop the blade. "You might have…" she stopped and swallowed hard glancing at Dean who eyed her curiously wondering what was truth, what wasn't. "But this is my mind! You have no quarter here!" she railed against the wiry man in the back seat, and with Dean beside her they watched the demon fly apart knowing it would regroup and return soon.

She nodded, "Sam's been trying to reach you Dean… if you can't find your way out by yourself, keep your mind open… he can help you, it's all he wants…" she explained and winced then drew a deep breath.

"What's wrong?" he asked and turned his head quickly, once more trying to catch that flash of silver. "What is that?" he asked turning back. Somehow he'd known she wouldn't be in the drivers seat, but he didn't like what he saw there. The beige interior of her car was sodden with so much blood the seat glistened and appeared almost maroon.

--

"…ra…?" he mumbled tossing his head as his dad and brother called to him, hoping this was a sign that he was coming back.

--

tbc

y'all are gonna kill me.

sifi


	13. Chapter 13

Solitary Man – chpt 13

By: sifi

--

_Aim for that big wide open spot right there…_the wiser part of her brain instructed as the hand of the man who'd been possessed pointed to a clear channel amongst many parked cars. "Oh goody…" she sighed upon seeing a yellow wall on her right. She heard more than felt the impact or the scraping of her faithful Hunny's passenger side along the wall, "I should be doing something right now…" she thought.

"Uh brakes! Brakes!" her passenger shouted as her foot finally moved.

"Oh goody we're baaaa aack… now I get to see how your oreo filling's doing…" the slice of demon said from the back seat and made to get out of the car.

"Oh no you don't…" Laura slurred immune to any physical sensation for the time being as she turned in her seat and grabbed the apparition by the throat only to find her hand closing on thin air… "Oh you're gonna pay for that…"

"Don't you let him underestimate you girl… now get your ass out the car and go help that boy… look…" he pointed to the emergency exit that stood open just popped out of his latch, "See… God's good to you… ya hit the wall 'n popped the door open… see…" he encouraged.

Laura took a deep breath and nodded. She actually felt better, well it wasn't so much better as it was… without pain. She slid from the car and shivered in the cool evening air.

"Better take a jacket lil'miss… you don't wanna give 'em too big a fright now do ya?" the slice of human asked pointing to her abdomen where it looked like a large silver coin had been sewn to her shirt.

She held up her finger, _Good point!_ and slowly pulled her jacket on then zipped it well above the wound. _Okay?_ she thought looking inquisitively at her passenger who nodded and gave her the thumbs up.

_Oohlrighty then…_she half smiled clinging to the car until she could reach the wall and use that as her main support to the door.

--

"Laura?" Dean called getting out of the car and looking both up and down the street but unsure of much thanks to the multitudes of faces meandering the downtown streets. There were so many people, so many possibilities he couldn't… his eyes fell on a woman in the same color clothes walking with a lean black man. _Looks more like she's being dragged… whether its her or not I gotta help…_ he sighed and took off at an easy lope Eastward on Harrison toward the lake. He kept his eyes on the odd looking pair and sped up when they made a quick right turn, the woman definitely showing signs of being dragged or coerced.

He sped up and to his surprise none of the faces on the street really paid him much attention, a few pedestrians side stepped to allow him passage but he was already accustomed to this from the people in this city. The prevailing attitude seemed to be, 'let him go around me', except when it came to the drivers.

He turned the corner, headed South now and scanned the crowd, _Don't these people ever go inside any of these buildings! _he wondered angrily and caught sight of them once more. This time the wiry man turned and looked back meeting his eyes and he froze for a moment. _I know that face…I've seen him before... Yeah dumbass that's the guy that pulled a knife on her from the backseat… no I mean other than that I've seen him before… Yeah and speaking of which… uhm… hello… Dean! Say it with me now… D-mon… Big 'D' little 'mon'… demon… he just tried to slash her throat! _he shook his head, _her seat was covered in blood, like swimming in it… what the hell's going on here? Could she have been right? Is this all just some sick mind game? some…nightmare? And if so… how do I get out?_ he wondered and realized the demon that was dragging Laura away from him seemed to be waiting for something. Maybe even for him to make up his mind.

_First things first…_he decided and poured on the speed giving full chase to the son of a bitch that was taunting him. _If nothing else and he's just a regular old fashioned bad guy, I'll get to kick some ass, if he's a demon… oh he is soooo gonna pay…._ He promised and saw the man smile just before disappearing down an alley with the girl in tow.

His eyes flicked to the silver streak on his left, almost before it appeared. He wasn't sure at first if it was just a reflection of the sun on some chrome or something but he knew it couldn't be. It was larger than any chrome flash he'd ever seen and now that he seemed to have even some small evidence that its appearance was connected to his emotions he could almost predict it. _Yeah great, professor Peabody'd love to puzzle this out… God Sam…I miss you…I let you…no, she said it's a nightmare… yeah well I knew that… No dude, seriously… who're you gonna believe? The reality around you or the reality she tells you to? I mean are you that whipped by someone you won't even say…She knows… freakin' cheat man…hello can we get back to the issue at hand? We're about to confront a demon and we don't even have a damned gun on us… do we? _he couldn't remember and patted himself down as he pressed his back to the building and risked a quick glance down the alley. _Oooh… a stroke of luck…_he thought happily feeling the familiar shape of his .9mm in his jacket pocket and drawing it out comfortably into his hand. _She'd say you just created a reality…Yeah, she says a lot of stuff I don't quite get… okay, let's get down to business here… lots of hiding places and they're not in the open… it's going to try and draw me out…maybe this is my time? Maybe this is where it finally comes for me and I get to be back with Dad and Sam…Dude you've got issues y'know that? _he huffed and shook his head, _I got more issues than National freakin' Geographic…now let's go kill this son of a bitch…_ He turned and moved stealthily into the alley.

--

Sam turned back from the window, "I don't see anything, it was probably down the street or something," he shrugged and worked on slowing his heartbeat, both he and John had been so focused on Dean that when the sounds of crunching metal and plastic seemed to vibrate through the ground it startled them both and they realized there'd been an accident.

They were hoping he was fighting his way up from whatever hell Sam had glimpsed, the images were jumbled in his brain and the feelings behind them so intense it was like eating powdered sugar out of the box, in the same way that was too sweet, these images and feelings were too real and yet because they weren't Sam's they were unreal as well. He shook his head, there was no doubt he was confused but he was also certain he'd managed once again to touch his brother's mind.

For a moment Dean had mumbled, he'd tossed his head and he even seemed as if his heart beat and breathing were speeding up and deepening. Like he was preparing to come awake, but that had been almost half an hour ago and he'd settled back down much to their heartbreak.

Something thumped hard against the door startling both men to their feet. John drew his gun as Sam approached it sidelong. He peered through the peephole and John watched the color drain from his face as he threw the flimsy thing open.

"Di'I miss anything?" Laura breathed leaning heavily against the doorframe.

"Oh my god…" Sam breathed checking the hallway and offering his arm to her. She looked like hell. "What happened?" he asked taking in the somehow still functioning mess that used to be a woman.

"Holy crap…" John breathed sliding a chair quickly toward her while Sam guided her toward it.

She shook her head, her long hair moving in one solid mass of knots, dirt and dried blood. Her lips were split, her nose seemed broken and her face was smeared with blood. One of her eyes was swollen nearly closed and she was moving as if something vital was broken. "Can't sit…" she breathed headed straight for Dean's bedside where she used Sam as if he was a pull up bar, and lowered herself to her knees.

"Dean…" she sniffed, her arms reaching for him while her tears washed her face a little cleaner. She looked behind her and snarled, "Don't you touch him! Just shut up!" as Sam and John exchanged worried looks. She shook her head, "No… no, no, no… I will, just please… try to keep him quiet…" she pleaded into the mattress while her hands rested on Dean's arm.

Haltingly she explained to them about the demon that left a piece of itself twisted in their boys' brain doing everything in its power to create a virtually flawless reality in which everyone he cared about was violently removed from existence.

John leaned back in the chair and Sam sat on the bed trying to get a gauge on just how badly she was hurt. It might just be that after whatever she'd been after, then fighting a demon, then rushing to get here, that she hadn't recovered because she hadn't had an opportunity to rest yet. Half his mouth cocked, _I hope… yeah… _

"So if this is interwoven in his psyche how do we get it out without killing him?" John asked almost combatively.

She tilted her head up, careful not to move anything else and met Sam's eyes, "Two options…" she smiled weakly.

"Exorcise it or shoot him with one of Red Bird's bullets?" Sam double checked.

"Yeah…" she acknowledged and bowed her head against the side of the mattress again one of her hands intertwined with Dean's, the other stroking his hair absently. "I don't have the energy to get back in there Sam…" she nearly whimpered and he understood.

"You've got a slice of it in you, that's how come you know what it planned. You dipped into it just like you did with Dean that night at the hospital," Sam filled in and noticed John looking at him as if he'd just flipped his lid. "Can I help?" he asked.

"I don't know… I've never tried to use someone else as a… battery…" she muttered realizing that her chances of staying coherent were sliding through her fingers like so much sand.

--

Dean couldn't move. His whole body was frozen in place, he couldn't even move his mouth or blink. He could feel his heart beating and his lungs breathing but other than that there was no physical movement he could make. _Watch my nose itch now…_he tried to crack his fear with a little humor as the demon stepped out from beneath a fire escape stairwell, its arm wrapped around Laura's neck, fingers placed strategically at killing points in case he tried to do something heroic, i.e. stupid. In its other hand was that same blade from the car angled from the side to be easily thrust beneath the sternum and between the ribs, right into the heart.

Dean met her eyes, his heart wrenching almost to the point where he thought he'd finally just pass out. Yesterday he'd lost his brother, today he'd lost his father and right now he was verging on losing the one other person on this planet who, even though they shared no blood, had given him whatever he needed, never asking for anything in return.

He watched her lip twitch and fold halfway up into a smirk he was more than familiar with. _I can't risk it…It's not real, she told me it's not real… but what if she's wrong? Dean, what do YOU believe?_ he heard a different voice ask from within. It was rich and full and had just a bare hint of the kind of '…iiinnnng…' a fine blade will have when it's thrown and squares perfectly into its target, and it was his.

He pulled the gun and shot.

Laura spun from the demon's grasp and stood to the side watching as demon killing lightning coursed through its being.

At her side, with his arm around her shoulders watching the demon die Dean didn't bother looking for that slash of silver. Inside him something that had been caked and encrusted, mottled with pain and helplessness began to gleam.

"Time for you to wake up and kill this son of a bitch for real sweetie," she smiled, turning in his embrace and diving into his almost glowing eyes. She raised her hand to his cheek and drew him down to her height. He smiled against her mouth and felt her do the same as their lips came together.

--

Dean's body gave a wrenching heave as Sam spoke the incantation to drive the demon piece out. They had no fear of using the ritual, John was there with the Colt and the Red Bird bullets if it tried to get away and Laura, though she still looked terrible seemed to have rallied a bit and refused to be budged from Dean's side.

Sam and John had both argued that the ritual would probably draw the slice of demon out of her as well and in her state they weren't sure what kind of effect that would have. She'd waved off their concerns resigning herself to whatever might happen. Still, what did happen probably could not have been predicted.

His hand squeezed hers as the demon screamed its way out of him and swirled within the salt ring they'd made on the floor. Laura felt several small snaps in her hand and wondered if she'd live to feel it later. For the time being she was enthralled by the sight of the living dark dust that erupted from Dean. As Sam continued to read from outside the circle and John remained poised to shoot she began to feel her own little slice of the demon start to scream in her head, and then it was screaming its way out of her as well.

--

Dean felt his hand squeeze hers and he felt the bones break in his grip as his eyes finally slid open and his awareness quickly measured the situation. _She was right…Dad… Sammy…_he thought as the words came out of his mouth through his brothers rich chanting. _He's really getting good with Latin…_he rolled onto his side as Laura threw her head back and unleashed her chunk 'o demon into the room where it joined with his. _Kinky but appropriate_, he nodded within himself as he simply took the information in. He'd make sense of it later. Someone would make sense of it later. _Baby you look like hell,_ he thought realizing just what a terrible state she was in. Above the bed, in a column of black the Winchester boys saw the full power of the Ritual Romano as it had originally been intended to be worked. The column of living dark dust gained cohesion, each particle joining with another until they formed a being as solid as any of the other four in the room. Solid and weighted, it became subject to the same laws of physics as any other corporeal entity, and it knew it.

The face it wore was that of the telepath, which might have been from the slice of him that was in Laura's head too. It's lips curled back over its teeth. It's eyes swam hypnotically with full blackness as it stood at the foot of the bed and took in the scene. All five beings froze and for a moment time refused to budge. Dean's hand was reaching for the nightstand, John had the Colt raised to his eye, Sam had his gun raised and ready in his good left hand and the journal in his right and Laura was looking into those black and soulless eyes.

_Maybe I have enough for you…_she smiled and rose to her feet, her left hand unzipped her jacket then moved to her back while the fingers of her right hand slid around the fat end of her silver spike.

The embodied demon saw its death in her eyes and lurched toward her weakness, hoping to kill the boy or at least poison him, hurt him enough so he could escape.

Real-time came back in the blink of an eye as she pulled the spike out of her body, flipped it and re-extended the last few couples in one fluid motion before turning in toward the demon with her arm extended, the point of the spike backward as he dove toward Dean and found himself impailed through the throat on her weapon of choice.

"He belongs to me bitch!" she scowled then looked from one Winchester to the next, their mouths each dropped in just a little bit of surprise with Dean's beginning to tilt up at the corner. She looked at him as he rose to his knees toward her, "I'll work on the banter…" she smiled and looked down watching the sheet turn red with a torrent of blood that flowed from her now open wound in a river.

"Laura…" she heard Dean call, his voice coming to her through sponge that stuffed her head. _At last… just a little rest._

--

Dean arrived with the ambulance and hopped down, walking along side the gurney and the EMT's into the ER at Cook County Hospital, his whole body was shaking and he was on the verge of doubting whether or not he'd really woken up. Slowly certainty began to build as he scratched at the scruff on his face and carefully examined the faces of the staff that went to work tending Laura. He didn't recognize any of them and that made him feel, literally worlds better.

"Dean…" Sam called jogging through the doorway to him. He stood at his brothers side with his arm around his shoulders watching silently, his eyes darting from the Medical personnel to the look of complete concentration on his older brothers face. He was barely breathing and his body was ram rod tense, all his energy was focused on those people in that room. _I hope to God you're right Laura…I hope all that manifestation of reality through an act of will isn't just blowing smoke sweetheart, cause if I have anything to say about it, you're gonna be fine, you're gonna be fine… you're strong and healthy… uh, usually… and you're gonna be fine…you better be fine…_ he seemed to breathe for a moment and felt that voice again, that rich one that was slowly becoming more of him, filling him in a way he hadn't known he'd been lacking, _She's the favored emissary of Cernunnos, he won't let anything happen to her… the Horned God… fertility and renewal…good things…_

Sam looked back at the staff for a moment then his brows furrowed as he looked around the trauma room. It was yellow painted cinder block, and the shelves were positioned almost identically to what he'd seen in Dean's mind, _Uhm… we've been here before remember? After the Daeva's tore us up?_ he breathed a sigh of relief and squeezed Dean's shoulders, _Okay then… that makes sense._

"Where's dad?" Dean asked, "He take off again?"

He felt Sam shake his head, his eyes never leaving the ribbons of blood flowing onto the floor from the gurney, "He's parking the truck,"

One of the nurses tried to usher them out of the room but Dean wouldn't be budged and where Dean was, Sam was. It was that simple.

"Sam?" Dean said softly, his focus still sharp on the activity in the room which seemed to have toned its urgency down a bit.

"Yeah?"

"What did I tell you last time you went missing?" he asked.

Sam smiled and huffed a chuckle, "You said you wouldn't go looking for me,"

Dean nodded.

"Dude you were getting shot at and you hung up on me…" Sam countered.

"Stray bullet… and I was upset," he shrugged.

"You had me scared silly Dean…"

"You're silly most of the time anyway…" he jibed reflexively then added, "…sorry."

"Me too," Sam nodded.

"Can I get in on this?" John asked softly from behind the boys.

"Three cheers for feeling sorry for ourselves?" Sam asked smiling tightly.

"Yeah alright Spongebob…" Dean nodded as the Medical team began disconnecting tubes and hoses and hung the I.V. bags from a stand that was part of the cart.

One of the doctors approached the three men. Dean stepped forward and shook his hand. The doctor noticed he was pretty well covered in blood and nodded, "We're taking Miss Finnegan to emergency surgery, her injuries are extensive but she's stable enough to risk it… if we wait much longer we might lose that edge…"

Dean nodded, "What do you think?" he asked softly and took comfort in the hands of his father and brother, each on one of his shoulders, lending whatever they could.

"She's young and strong… but the damage is severe…if she survives the next few days, she'll most likely make a complete recovery… most likely, and that's with lots of therapy…"

_She'll survive and she'll recover completely, a helluva lot faster than you'll believe possible, _Dean thought and nodded.

"There's a waiting room on 3 that has some nice couches, or, I'd suggest you get yourself a hotel room and we'll have one of the nurses call you when…" he offered.

Dean shook his head, "I'm not going anywhere,"

"I told you I'm not leaving you alone…" Sam nodded at his side.

John flushed with pride and nodded, "…I'm staying…"

--

The sun was rising over the lake when the surgeon entered the waiting room and met Dean's eyes. He rose and as if on cue Sam and John both woke and rose in fluid motions to join them in the semi-private consultation room.

"The surgery was textbook… Miss Finnegan did a fine job of cooperating, with luck she may be up on her feet as early as this evening…"

"Are you kidding?" Dean asked clearly astounded.

"I said on her feet Mr…." he stopped.

"Dean,"

"Mr. Dean… she'll probably only be able to make it to the bathroom and back… but if she keeps on cooperating she might be able to go home in just a few days…"

All the rest was a buzz of information that would make no sense to him until Sam or John would explain it later. All he knew was that she might be able to go home soon and she was going to survive.

"Can I see her?" he asked.

--

When he arrived at her door she was already sitting up in bed, her eyes were glassy and her smile was very loose. He knew she was probably very heavily sedated. Still she was awake, not bleeding and not dead… all three very important factors.

"Heya haaansome," she slurred and patted the bed.

"Hey yourself…" he smiled and wrapped her fingers in his while looking at the cast on her left hand, "Sorry bout that…"

"Prfftt… after getting spiked with my own spike… twernt nuthin…" she squinted her eyes and tried to focus on him while her right hand came over and stroked his beard, "I kinda like it…"

"Itches,"

"Mmm," she nodded, "How're you doin' sweetie? You back in your right head now?"

He nodded, "Thank you…" then watched her lips turn up as her eyes closed and she scooted down against the pillows. Dean stood up, tucked the blankets around her and pressed his lips to her temple, "I'll be here for you when you wake up."

"Mmmm love you Dean," she murmured.

He held his breath and bit his tongue then nodded and stroked her cheek, "I know," while he thought, _Yeah… me too._

--

End…

Please let me know if you liked or hated – oh yeah I think its TWoP for the National Geographic homage…and of course Spongebob...

Thanks for coming along for the ride,

sifi


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